Gaza’s Plummeting Birth Rate and the Crime of Reproductive Violence.

Photo by hosny salah on Pixabay.com

After more than two years of Gaza being subjected to intensified Israeli attacks and military operations, the birth rate of the territory has fallen by 41%, with only 17 000 new recorded births in the first half of 2025, a new 2026 report by Physicians for Human Rights concludes. This fall in births is the result of Israel’s targeted attacks on Gazan health care facilities and hospitals, restricted circulation and entry of medical supplies, and malnutrition due to limited access to humanitarian food aid. Gaza’s extremely harsh living conditions, caused by the aforementioned Israeli actions, also directly impact the rates of neonatal mortality and how safely Gazan mothers may give birth.

In fact, the Physicians for Human Rights reports that sustained Israeli bombardments, even under the current ceasefire, led to the destruction of most medical facilities and of all facilities treating infertility issues. Moreover, pregnant Gazan women who suffer from prolonged malnutrition were shown to develop pregnancy complications which result in more miscarriages and preterm births. In addition, due to the lack of liquid nitrogen stocks, remaining frozen embryos face high risks of mortality as the current situation complicates keeping them at the right temperature.

The fact that Israel strategically targets medical facilities which provides assistance and services to  pregnant women and newborns, as well as perpetually limiting access to food and healthcare supplies, represents a form of reproductive violence, which is best defined as “acts and omissions that directly or indirectly violate reproductive autonomy, understood as the capacity that all individuals have to decide whether to reproduce, when and with whom, and to access sexual and reproductive health information and services”. Forms of reproductive violence includes, but are not limited to, forced sterilization, forced abortion and, most importantly in this case, the prevention of births.

Furthermore, reproductive violence is legally prohibited under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and,  as established in article 6(d) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICL), imposing measures intended to  prevent  births within a national, ethnic, racial or religious group constitutes an act of genocide.  

Back in August 2025, a UN report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, had already concluded that Israel had committed four acts of genocide in Gaza. The UN’s independent international commission of inquiry (COI) had also come to the same conclusion in its September 2025 report on the situation, which Israel rejected, calling on its member states to use all available means to stop the genocide in Gaza as a lack or absence of action would translate to complicity. In response to this report, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard had called on the international community to “exert all possible diplomatic, economic, and political pressure to ensure an immediate and lasting ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza” and urged states to “re-evaluate their trade ties with Israel”.

Gaza’s dramatic decline in birth rate should therefore be understood as the result of sustained policies aimed at dismantling the population’s reproductive health and autonomy and aligned with internationally prohibited forms of reproductive violence and genocide.

written by Antonio Colilli