A group of thirty mothers were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants forced their way into the building, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the deteriorating protection for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data show an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 violent acts against maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of pregnant women are trapped.
Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 taken hostage, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they capture solely incidents documented publicly. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals were inaccessible.
“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 denied deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“We are being singled out,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and a stark lack of legal accountability for those attacking childbirth services.
This lack of accountability has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off 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 limited by 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, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
Most maternal deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards points toward a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a means of intimidation and to destroy community bonds,” notes 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 ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
