Dozens of women were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were experiencing childbirth.
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. Combatants raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a stark illustration of the deteriorating protection for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are particularly at risk due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an unprecedented scale of attacks: 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.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances were in a conflict area. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking 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 genocide allegations.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children continue to die from inadequate care, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported 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,” explains 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 maternity and neonatal facilities have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“We are being singled out,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility can be under attack now,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This lack of accountability has led to a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area was isolated 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 restricted due to a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
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
A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, 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 devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to tear apart the social fabric,” notes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
