🔗 Share this article

A group of thirty mothers had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.

On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”

This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.

Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.

An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care

Although world powers are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their need for locally available medical care.

An investigation of records uncover 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 incidents do not represent inevitable outcomes of conflict. They form a systematic assault on childbirth.”

The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.

Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.

A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health

The numbers are probably a grave undercount, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many conflict zones, communications are sparse.

Last year, it was reported that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.

Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, creating a grave danger to community survival.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in accusations of genocidal acts.

Following truces, doctors report that women and children continue to die from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.

“We’ve had rockets targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.

The Crisis in Ukraine

Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.

“We are being singled out,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.

“The truth of the matter is, 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 over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.

This absence of consequences has led to a “culture of impunity,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute 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 spiking dangerously, especially among children and pregnant women.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, causing fatalities among patients and staff.

In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed 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

A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births devoid of emergency care.

“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to tear apart the social fabric,” 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 now become a standard defence.”