Dozens of women were huddled for safety 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.
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. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “a crime beyond words,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records reveal 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 standard wartime hazards. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of expectant mothers are stranded.
Women have been killed, prevented from accessing care, 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 detained—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for accusations of genocidal acts.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children continue to die from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“We’ve had rockets targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters 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. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living close to deadly warfare, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those targeting maternity care.
This lack of accountability has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, 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
Most maternal 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 without skilled assistance.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to destroy community bonds,” says a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
