Thirty women were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital 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, became one of the few known survivors. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This brutal attack stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Although world powers have agreed to the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not natural consequences of war. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of pregnant women are trapped.
Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis in Maternal Health
These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.
Last year, analysis showed that 50% of women who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind genocide allegations.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially 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 rising sharply, especially among children and pregnant women.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked 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
A large proportion of mother deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a means of intimidation and to destroy community bonds,” notes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
