Dozens of women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Several had recently given birth, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Working that 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 were killing everyone inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This brutal attack stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have described it as “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of attacks on healthcare systems. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data show an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not standard wartime hazards. They form a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.
Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, 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 killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, analysis showed that one in two mothers who died during pregnancy or childbirth resided in a war zone. This underscores a devastating pattern.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are wrecking critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability.
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 declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women having children by the roadside because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes 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 trying to alter birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to birth complications.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked 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
Most maternal deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births without skilled assistance.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to destroy community bonds,” notes a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”
