A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.
On duty during that fateful 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 recounts. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This appalling incident stands as among the worst examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have described it as “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have signed the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are particularly at risk due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not natural consequences of war. They form 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, 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 in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a grave undercount, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many conflict zones, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for genocide allegations.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children continue to die from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“We’ve had rockets fired at 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. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“We are being singled out,” says 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 can strike a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living close to deadly warfare, there are minimal protections and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This lack of accountability has fostered a “culture of impunity,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute 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 increasing drastically, especially among children and pregnant women.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire 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 collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to break societal cohesion,” notes 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 ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
