🔗 Share this article

Dozens of women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.

On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”

This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions.

Rights organizations have labeled it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a clear case of the deteriorating protection for civilians living amidst warfare in multiple global hotspots.

An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services

Despite every significant nation are signatories to the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are particularly at risk due to their dependence on locally available medical care.

An investigation of records show an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 violent acts against maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.

“This is not standard wartime hazards. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”

The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of pregnant women are trapped.

Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or made to have their babies in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.

The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns

These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.

Last year, it was reported that one in two mothers who died during pregnancy or childbirth resided in a war zone. This underscores a catastrophic reality.

Apart from fatalities, these attacks are obliterating maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.

Conditions within Gaza

In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for genocide allegations.

Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.

“Our facility has endured missile strikes targeting 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 trying to alter birthrates.

The Crisis in Ukraine

Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.

“The attacks on us are intentional,” 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 can be under attack now,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris could impact 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 targeting maternity care.

This void of justice has fostered a “culture of impunity,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”

Other Conflict Zones

In El Fasher, the area was isolated 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 limited by a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.

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 avoidable with standard medicine, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care.

“The deliberate attack on maternity wards speaks to a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to destroy community bonds,” 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 ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”