Thirty women were seeking shelter 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.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as among the worst examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, leaving dead 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 caught in conflict zones in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data reveal 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.
“These are not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, prevented from accessing care, or made to have their babies in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 detained—sometimes while assisting births.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, posing a long-term threat to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care 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 a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible.
“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 contested deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“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.
“In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and a stark lack of legal accountability for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has created a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from 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 hit a neonatal ward, resulting in tragic loss of life.
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
A large proportion of mother deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births without skilled assistance.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards speaks to 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 may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
