Thirty women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “There were cries of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as among the worst examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have labeled it “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering 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 inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of expectant mothers are stranded.
Mothers have lost their lives, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they capture solely incidents documented publicly. In many conflict zones, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in accusations of genocidal acts.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling fired at 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.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“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.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This lack of accountability has created a “culture of impunity,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, 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 spiking dangerously, especially among children and pregnant women.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is scarce because of a lack of access 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 avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births lacking professional help.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to tear apart the social fabric,” notes a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
