Dozens of women were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have described it as “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the collapse in safety for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have signed the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations uncover 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 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not natural consequences of war. They form a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of pregnant women are trapped.
Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are wrecking critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in declaring certain actions a genocide.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those targeting maternity care.
This absence of consequences has created a “culture of impunity,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially 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 rising sharply, 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 struck a baby care unit, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
The majority of childbirth fatalities are avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births without skilled assistance.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted points toward 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.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
