Childbirth Under Attack: How Women and Babies Became Targets in Global Conflicts.

A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.

On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”

This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 innocent people inside.

Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.

An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services

While all major powers are signatories to the international laws of war, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.

An investigation of records show an unprecedented scale of attacks: 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 represent a pattern of reproductive violence.”

The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped.

Mothers have lost their lives, denied medical attention, or forced to give birth in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.

The Global Crisis in Maternal Health

These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.

Last year, it was reported that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.

In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are wrecking critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the catastrophic impact 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 continue to die from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were inaccessible.

“We’ve had rockets fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.

Ukraine's Ordeal

Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.

“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.

“The truth of the matter is, every facility can be under attack now,” states 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 scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.

This absence of consequences has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially acts of genocide by preventing births.”

Additional Hotspots

In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, causing fatalities among patients and staff.

In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.

The End of Safe Deliveries

A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.

“The deliberate attack on maternity wards points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” notes a legal researcher.

“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”