Titled "Pregnancy Under Fire: Reproductive Violence and the Destruction of Maternal Life in Gaza," the report was published by the UK-based Palestinian Return Centre, drawing on data from UN agencies and medical and humanitarian organizations to chart the toll the genocide has taken on mothers and children.
Its central finding is that the damage will not end when the war does. Malnutrition, displacement, and psychological trauma inflicted now, the report warned, could shape the health and development of an entire generation of Gaza's children for years to come.
The report argues that the war's violence does not stop at killing and destruction, but reaches into the earliest stages of life itself, shaping a child's odds of survival before they are even born. Thousands of pregnant women, it said, are now navigating pregnancy under conditions that would be considered extreme emergencies anywhere else in the world, stripped of even the most basic healthcare.
Citing United Nations Population Fund figures, the report said the number of pregnant and breastfeeding women facing severe malnutrition risk is projected to hit roughly 55,000 by mid-2026, more than triple the 17,000 recorded just a year earlier, in mid-2025. One in every five babies born in Gaza today arrives premature or underweight.
The report states that maternity services across the Strip are in a state of functional collapse. Of Gaza's 37 hospitals, only 20 remain even partially operational, and not a single one is running at full capacity, hobbled by relentless damage and chronic shortages of medicine, blood, fuel, and basic medical equipment.
The result is women giving birth without anesthesia or proper medical support, often in packed shelters or makeshift spaces with none of the facilities a delivery requires. The line between survival and death, the report said, has never been thinner.
Beyond the physical toll, the report warned of lasting psychological damage from relentless bombardment, displacement, grief, and hunger. Prolonged exposure to extreme stress during pregnancy, it said, can impair fetal development, a process through which the violence being inflicted on Gaza today converts into biological harm that could follow children for life.
The findings echo repeated warnings from the UN Population Fund, which has said conditions for women and girls across the Palestinian territories keep deteriorating amid a worsening humanitarian crisis, restrictions on movement, escalating violence, and funding shortfalls, all of which it says carry serious consequences for women's physical and mental health.
Source: Almayadeen
