Thirty women had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, 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. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the international laws of war, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show an shocking trend: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, prevented from accessing care, or compelled to deliver in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, it was reported that one in two mothers who lost their lives in maternal circumstances resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger 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 genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children continue to die from medical shortages, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible.
“We’ve had rockets 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.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“We are being singled out,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This void of justice has created a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 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 been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. 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 larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” observes a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed 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 often been cited as an excuse.”
