A group of thirty mothers had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “There were cries 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 African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Mothers in labor are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations uncover an shocking trend: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, 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 killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they only include incidents reported in news outlets. 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.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind declaring certain actions a genocide.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes 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 aiming to influence birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from 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 scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
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 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.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted speaks to a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to tear apart the social fabric,” observes a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”
