Dozens of women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Working that 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 were killing everyone inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a clear case of the collapse in safety for civilians living amidst warfare in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against 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 represent a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
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 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, communications are sparse.
Last year, analysis showed that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future 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 genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from medical shortages, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling hitting 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 aiming to influence birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to birth complications.
“We are being singled out,” asserts 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 is now a potential target,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the more than 676 million women living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care.
This absence of consequences has led to a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
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 limited by a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
A large proportion of mother deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that fear is now driving 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 larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” says 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 increasingly been used as a justification.”
