Thirty women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were in the midst of labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “There were cries of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, leaving dead more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the collapse in safety for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of attacks on healthcare systems. Mothers in labor are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where a vast number of pregnant women are trapped.
Women have been killed, prevented from accessing care, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 detained—sometimes while assisting births.
The Global Crisis in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, communications are sparse.
Last year, analysis showed that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Direct shelling 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 aiming to influence birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This void of justice has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, 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 lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, resulting in tragic loss of life.
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
Most maternal deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted 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,” says a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection 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 increasingly been used as a justification.”
