Thirty women were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data show an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent natural consequences of war. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, denied medical attention, or forced to give birth in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 taken hostage, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that one in two mothers who died during pregnancy or childbirth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for accusations of genocidal acts.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women giving birth in rubble because hospitals could not be reached.
“We’ve had rockets targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested 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. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility can be under attack now,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area was isolated 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a means of intimidation and to tear apart the social fabric,” says a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
