A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “There were cries of women and children,” he recounts. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This appalling incident stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Although world powers have signed the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records reveal 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 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent standard wartime hazards. They form a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, 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 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who died during pregnancy or childbirth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for accusations of genocidal acts.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women giving birth in rubble because hospitals could not be reached.
“We’ve had rockets hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“We are being singled out,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those targeting maternity care.
This void of justice has led to a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Other Conflict Zones
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 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, 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 End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births lacking professional help.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted indicates a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” notes 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.”
