Learning, Relearning and Sharing to Address Obstetric Violence

How do feminist groups and other civil society actors draw attention to obstetric violence while uplifting the dignity of victims?

Who’s effectively challenging the widespread acceptance of this form of gender-based violence directed at women and girls in maternal health settings, especially in contexts where it is one of many urgent and interwoven problems? What do successful efforts in various contexts and countries have in common?

These were questions I was left with after research and advocacy in Sierra Leone on obstetric violence in 2025. In Sierra Leone, women’s experiences are rarely heard. The terrifying reality of birth in government hospitals and other facilities for women experiencing poverty is buried in public speeches and health conferences and other official spaces where the government and donors would rather discuss the country’s impressive and much-touted reduction of maternal deaths.

I had a chance to interview more than 50 women who had experienced obstetric violence, ranging from verbal abuse and shaming to severe neglect and physical abuse. The women I spoke with are understandably furious, devastated. Officials privately acknowledge the problems, and some actions have been taken, but no one appears to be listening to these individuals’ experiences.  

But positive models are available, making use of the women’s own accounts, that show how we can make changes in deep patterns entrenched in other problems.

Accounts collected by an independent governmental body in a hospital in Malawi, at a loving, feminist “people’s” tribunal in Mexico, written on a hospital sheet as part of a protest against obstetric violence in South Africa or in response to a provider making appropriate space for patients with disabilities in a clinical setting to say what they want and need.

To hear from colleagues working in varied places and in very different ways the Center for Reproductive Rights, a long-time leader on this work, and my organisation Human Rights Watch are hosting a webinar on June 2.

You can register here: Webinar Registration - Zoom. Please share widely with your networks, there will be Spanish translation (and you can see the Spanish version of the webinar invitation at the bottom of this blog).

Attendees will learn about:

• How GIRE, a feminist organization that promotes social and cultural transformation in Mexico through reproductive justice created the Symbolic Court on Maternal Death and Obstetric Violence, held in Mexico City in 2016. Brenda Rodríguez will explain how this initiative brought together 27 women and families who shared their accounts regarding obstetric violence. The Court exposed structural failures and a lack of accountability, aiming to raise awareness of these abuses, acknowledge the dignity of the victims, and demand justice.  
• How EMBRACE, a South African movement and organization dedicated to maternal rights and wellbeing, designed and created “Laundry Day” a day of activism that uplifted the findings of a 2025 Birthing Survey that exposed the high prevalence of obstetric violence in South Africa.  Julie Mentor will talk about how, through a picket outside the National Department of Health, feminist activists turned private pain into public testimony and a demand for accountability. They erected an oversized laundry line filled with hospital bedsheets containing stories from women and girls across the country who reported experiences of abuse, neglect, humiliation and mistreatment during pregnancy and childbirth.
• Martha Ndeyana Kwengwere, director of investigations and research, Office of the Ombudsman in Malawi, will describe how ombudspeople in maternity hospitals helped address high rates of obstetric violence by providing more accountability and a safe place for women to make complaints.
• And Amalie Quevedo, global technical lead for inclusive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) at Sightsavers, an international group working to advance equity and rights for people with disabilities, will present a practical tool kit designed to support health care providers in delivering disability inclusive, rights-based informed consent, and safeguarding across SRHR services. She will highlight work in Nigeria, Mali and Senegal strengthening respectful care, including in maternal and newborn health settings, and reducing forms of mistreatment such as obstetric violence.

It is easy to focus on numbers in public health and see outcomes as dualistic: live or die, boy or girl, stillborn or healthy, Caesarean or vaginal. I know from my own life that experiencing birth shook this view.  I’ve had the privilege of interviewing postpartum women in three cities in Sierra Leone. I learned much more from them about how deeply the experience of birth is shaped by friendly, uncaring and cruel forces, and how birth experiences reverberate through your life.

The way forward is complex but creating--or demanding-- space, for women to say what they want and need and to talk about what they have experienced seems to me, and I think to all the speakers at our upcoming webinar, to be necessary, if not sufficient to correct the problem.

All four of these amazing speakers will describe how in very different ways, in the clinical space, in public, in hospitals or at a picket, they have been part of this work of making space, listening, and learning. I am sure there are other examples out there and I hope this is just one of many events learning, relearning, and sharing together with others.

Photo by Alaister Russell for EMBRACE, depicting a participant at EMBRACE’s picket at the National Department of Health stands by hospital sheets decorated by women’s statements and accounts of obstetric violence in South African maternal health facilities.

Skye Wheeler is a senior adviser on women’s rights at Human Rights Watch. See more on her work here: Skye Wheeler | Human Rights Watch