Thirty women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility 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, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as among the worst examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the African nation apart. Combatants raided the hospital, reportedly killing more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have called 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 obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data uncover an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not natural consequences of war. They form a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands 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 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they are limited to incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are obliterating maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind declaring certain actions a genocide.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.
“Direct shelling 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.
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 skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” asserts 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 can be under attack now,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care.
This absence of consequences has created a “culture of impunity,” says a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Other Conflict Zones
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 hit a neonatal ward, resulting in tragic loss of life.
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 End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, 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 devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to destroy community bonds,” 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.”
