🔗 Share this article The Targeting of Childbirth: How Women and Babies Became Targets in Global Conflicts. A group of thirty mothers were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were in the midst of labor. On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he recounts. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.” This appalling incident stands as a particularly egregious examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the African nation apart. Combatants stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families. Rights organizations have described it as “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war. A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Mothers in labor are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care. Research and compiled data reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards. “These are not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.” The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped. Women have been killed, denied medical attention, or forced to give birth in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 abducted, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births. A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse. Last year, analysis showed that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a devastating pattern. In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to societal repopulation and recovery. The Situation in Gaza In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in accusations of genocidal acts. Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible. “Direct shelling hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates. Ukraine's Ordeal Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues. “We are being singled out,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians. “In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” states a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris could impact a hospital.” Accountability Evaporates For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services. This lack of accountability has led to a “culture of impunity,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.” Other Conflict Zones In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition spiking dangerously, especially among children and pregnant women. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, resulting in tragic loss of life. In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war. The Collapse of Safe Childbirth Most maternal deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births lacking professional help. “The deliberate attack on maternity wards points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a means of intimidation and to break societal cohesion,” observes a legal researcher. “There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”