A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, 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. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Although world powers have signed the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of attacks on healthcare systems. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their need for locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data uncover an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 abducted, and 101 detained—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a devastating pattern.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are wrecking critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women giving birth in rubble 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 contested deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says 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 can be under attack now,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the more than 676 million women living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those targeting maternity care.
This lack of accountability has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially 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 restricted due to a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” says a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
