A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he recounts. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as one of the most shocking examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Combatants forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the deteriorating protection for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of attacks on healthcare systems. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations uncover 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 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not standard wartime hazards. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped.
Mothers have lost their lives, 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 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 significant underestimate, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many conflict zones, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to societal repopulation and recovery.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children continue to die 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 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 aiming to influence birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers 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. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, 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 minimal protections and a stark lack of legal accountability for those assaulting reproductive health.
This void of justice has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition increasing drastically, 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 hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
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 Collapse of Safe Childbirth
Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” observes a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection 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 now become a standard defence.”
