A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Several had recently given birth, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he recounts. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
While all major powers have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Mothers in labor are particularly at risk due to their need for locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data 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.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. They form a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
These figures likely represent a substantial underreporting, as they are limited to incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are obliterating maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for genocide allegations.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
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.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” notes 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 over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This lack of accountability has led to a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 damaged a maternity hospital, 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 End of Safe Deliveries
The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” 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 ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
