Dozens of women were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, 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. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, leaving dead more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are particularly at risk due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering 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 inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of expectant mothers are stranded.
Deaths have occurred, prevented from accessing care, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights 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 succumb from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground 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,” states a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and a stark lack of legal accountability 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 forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
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 restricted due to a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
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
A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births lacking professional help.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a broader and more sinister pattern: 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 are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”
