Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Several had recently given birth, while others were actively in labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “There were cries 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 protracted internal conflict tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a stark illustration of the collapse in safety for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data show an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. 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 pregnant women are trapped.
Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
These figures likely represent a grave undercount, as they only include incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who died during pregnancy or childbirth 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 devastating effect 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 are still perishing from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks 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 denied 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 struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“We are being singled out,” 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,” states a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris could impact 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 targeting maternity care.
This absence of consequences has led to a “culture of impunity,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off 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 limited by a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
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 averted with basic healthcare, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to destroy community bonds,” observes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe 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.”
