Thirty women had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, 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 explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have described it as “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
While all major powers have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are particularly at risk due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women 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 systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of expectant mothers are stranded.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been killed, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
The numbers are probably a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind genocide allegations.
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. UN officials have relayed women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility is now a potential target,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, 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 rising sharply, especially among children and pregnant women.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is restricted due to a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
The majority of childbirth fatalities are preventable with routine care, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted points toward a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities 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 can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
