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 actively in labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, reportedly killing more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable 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 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, prevented from accessing care, or compelled to deliver in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences 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 are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling hitting 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 trying to alter birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to birth complications.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility is now a potential target,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has led to a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from 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 inability to report 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 Collapse of Safe Childbirth
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, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” says 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 ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
