Dozens of women had taken refuge 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, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “There were cries of women and children,” he recounts. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not natural consequences of war. They form a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver 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 while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
The numbers are probably a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, it was reported that one in two mothers who lost their lives in maternal circumstances resided in a war zone. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in accusations of genocidal acts.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were out of reach.
“We’ve had rockets targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This lack of accountability has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 limited by 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, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to tear apart the social fabric,” says 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 ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”
