Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the African nation apart. Combatants raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Although world powers are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Mothers in labor are particularly at risk due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.
Deaths have occurred, prevented from accessing care, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 detained—sometimes while assisting births.
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 areas of fighting, information is scarce.
Last year, analysis showed that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in accusations of genocidal acts.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.
“Direct shelling 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 seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” 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 is now a potential target,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This void of justice has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area was isolated 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 damaged a maternity hospital, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm 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 fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births lacking professional help.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to tear apart the social fabric,” notes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
