Thirty women were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, reportedly killing 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 collapse in safety for civilians living amidst warfare in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have signed the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of attacks on healthcare systems. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records reveal an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent natural consequences of war. They form a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or forced to give birth in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 detained—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they capture solely incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children continue to die from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.
“Direct shelling fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This void of justice has created a “culture of impunity,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area was isolated 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm 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 shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals 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 may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”
