Thirty women were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have called it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards 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 obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are particularly at risk due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not standard wartime hazards. They form a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of pregnant women are trapped.
Mothers have lost their lives, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been killed, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many areas of fighting, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, creating a grave danger to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights 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 are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women giving birth in rubble 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 denied deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care.
This void of justice has fostered a “culture of impunity,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition rising sharply, 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, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
A large proportion of mother deaths are averted with basic healthcare, 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 broader and more sinister pattern: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to destroy community bonds,” observes 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 ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
