Thirty women had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations uncover an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 violent acts against maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent standard wartime hazards. They represent a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of expectant mothers are stranded.
Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 abducted, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
The numbers are probably a grave undercount, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that one in two mothers who lost their lives in maternal circumstances were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, creating a grave danger 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 accusations of genocidal acts.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals were inaccessible.
“We’ve had rockets 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 aiming to influence birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“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.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This lack of accountability has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says 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.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from 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 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 been arrested, killed, or injured 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 terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to destroy community bonds,” notes a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
