Thirty women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, 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 states. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This brutal attack stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, reportedly killing more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records uncover an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent 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 hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped.
Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are obliterating hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes fired at 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 seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births taking place in basements and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This void of justice has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
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
A large proportion of mother deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted points toward a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to destroy community bonds,” says a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has now become a standard defence.”
