Childbirth Under Attack: The Making of Women and Babies into Targets in Global Conflicts.

A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital 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, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he recounts. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”

This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.

Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.

An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services

Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care.

Data analysis and investigations reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.

“This is not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a pattern of reproductive violence.”

The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of expectant mothers are stranded.

Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.

The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns

These figures likely represent a grave undercount, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many conflict zones, reporting is limited.

Last year, analysis showed that half of all women who died during pregnancy or childbirth resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.

Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to community survival.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind genocide allegations.

Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were inaccessible.

“Direct shelling targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.

The Crisis in Ukraine

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 taking place in basements and extreme psychological pressure leading to birth complications.

“The attacks on us are intentional,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.

“In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”

Accountability Evaporates

For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.

This absence of consequences has created a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”

Other Conflict Zones

In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 lack of access 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 faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war.

The Collapse of Safe Childbirth

A large proportion of mother 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, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.

“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted points toward a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” notes a legal researcher.

“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”