🔗 Share this article The Targeting of Childbirth: The Making of Women and Babies into Targets in Global Conflicts. Dozens of women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were experiencing childbirth. Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.” This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside. Rights organizations have described it as “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war. An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services Although world powers have signed the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care. Research and compiled data reveal an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards. “These are not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.” The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of expectant mothers are stranded. Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies. The Global Crisis in Maternal Health These figures likely represent a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited. Last year, it was reported that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend. Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are wrecking critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability. Conditions within Gaza In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind declaring certain actions a genocide. Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible. “We’ve had rockets targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates. The Crisis in Ukraine Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues. “We are being singled out,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians. “The truth of the matter is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris could impact a hospital.” Accountability Evaporates For the hundreds of millions of women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those attacking childbirth services. This lack of accountability has created a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by preventing births.” Other Conflict Zones In El Fasher, the area was isolated from humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition increasing drastically, 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, killing mothers, babies, and nurses. In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured 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, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care. “When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” says a legal researcher. “Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has now become a standard defence.”