🔗 Share this article

A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter 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.

Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “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. Militiamen stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions.

Rights organizations have labeled it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a stark illustration of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.

A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services

Despite every significant nation have agreed to the international laws of war, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.

Data analysis and investigations show an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.

“This is not natural consequences of war. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”

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

Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been killed, 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 capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.

Last year, it was reported that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a devastating pattern.

In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to societal repopulation and recovery.

Conditions within Gaza

In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations.

Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.

“Our facility has endured missile strikes hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.

Ukraine's Ordeal

Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births taking place in basements and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.

“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” 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.”

A Culture of Impunity

For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and a stark lack of legal accountability for those targeting maternity care.

This void of justice has created a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”

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 limited by a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.

In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war.

The End of Safe Deliveries

The majority of childbirth fatalities are avoidable with standard medicine, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births lacking professional help.

“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a means of intimidation and to tear apart the social fabric,” notes a legal researcher.

“There is no absolute protection 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.”