Thirty women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas 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 assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data uncover an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering 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 form a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands 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 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 detained—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, it was reported that 50% of women 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 demographic stability.
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 declaring certain actions a genocide.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.
“We’ve had rockets targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
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 extreme psychological pressure leading to birth complications.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility can be under attack now,” states 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 hundreds of millions of women living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has led to a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Additional Hotspots
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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to destroy community bonds,” observes 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 often been cited as an excuse.”
