Dozens of women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, reportedly killing more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending 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.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not standard wartime hazards. They form a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
These figures likely represent a substantial underreporting, as they are limited to incidents documented publicly. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to community survival.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women giving birth in rubble because hospitals could not be reached.
“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 rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter 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 forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.
“We are being singled out,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility can be under attack now,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has led to a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially 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 scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, 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
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 devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted speaks to a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” says a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
