Thirty women had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records uncover 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.
“These incidents do not represent inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped.
Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
These figures likely represent a grave undercount, as they only include incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, it was reported that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for genocide allegations.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“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. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has created a “culture of impunity,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked 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
Most maternal deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” observes 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 often been cited as an excuse.”
