A group of thirty mothers had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were in the midst of labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This appalling incident stands as among the worst examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which require them to safeguard 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.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an alarming level of violence: 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 standard wartime hazards. They form a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of expectant mothers are stranded.
Women have been killed, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 detained—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents covered by the media. In many areas of fighting, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth resided in a war zone. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are obliterating hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling fired at 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 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. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to birth complications.
“We are being singled out,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility is now a potential target,” states a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the more than 676 million women living close to deadly warfare, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This lack of accountability has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition increasing drastically, 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, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
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 avoidable with standard medicine, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births without skilled assistance.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” observes 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 often been cited as an excuse.”
