Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
Working that night, 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 explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the protracted internal conflict 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 stark illustration of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Although world powers are signatories to the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 violent acts against maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. They represent a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, 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 killed, 15 abducted, and 101 arrested—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a grave undercount, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who lost their lives in maternal circumstances were in a conflict area. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for accusations of genocidal acts.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Direct shelling targeting 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 struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility is now a potential target,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “culture of impunity,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Other Conflict Zones
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 scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, resulting in tragic loss of life.
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 preventable with routine care, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to break societal cohesion,” says 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 ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
