Thirty women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This brutal attack stands as a particularly egregious examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care
While all major powers have signed the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records reveal an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been murdered, 15 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they capture solely incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, 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 devastating pattern.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.
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 continue to die from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached.
“Direct shelling hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied 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. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“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.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This lack of accountability has created a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 limited by a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, 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 End of Safe Deliveries
The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” notes 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 often been cited as an excuse.”
