Dozens of women were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
On duty during that fateful 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 states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records uncover an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 violent acts against 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 constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of pregnant women are trapped.
Deaths have occurred, 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 murdered, 15 abducted, and 101 detained—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, analysis showed that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes fired at 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.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” 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 faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those targeting maternity care.
This absence of consequences has created a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area was isolated 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 restricted due to a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed 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 averted with basic healthcare, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births lacking professional help.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” says a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”
