Dozens of women had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he recounts. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Although world powers have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations uncover an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not natural consequences of war. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of expectant mothers are stranded.
Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are obliterating hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences 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 continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes hitting 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 trying to alter birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“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,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those targeting maternity care.
This absence of consequences has led to a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as 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 increasing drastically, 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 hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births lacking professional help.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted points toward a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to destroy community bonds,” observes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe 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.”
