Thirty women were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he recounts. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as a particularly egregious examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the international laws of war, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been killed, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, analysis showed that 50% of women who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a devastating pattern.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating hospitals and wards, 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 accusations of genocidal acts.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from medical shortages, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states 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 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground 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. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” states 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 within range of fighting, there are scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care.
This void of justice has led to a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, 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 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 scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
Most maternal deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to tear apart the social fabric,” says a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
