The Targeting of Childbirth: How Women and Babies Became Targets in Global Conflicts.
Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. 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. “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 ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a clear case of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Although world powers are signatories to the international laws of war, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of attacks on healthcare systems. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show 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 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent natural consequences of war. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a grave undercount, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind accusations of genocidal acts.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes targeting 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.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the hundreds of millions of women living close to deadly warfare, there are scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This void of justice has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
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 scarce because of a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire 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
Most maternal deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted points toward a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to destroy community bonds,” observes a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection 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.”
