🔗 Share this article

A group of thirty mothers had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were in the midst of labor.

On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”

This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers forced their way into the building, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.

Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.

A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care

While all major powers have signed the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.

Data analysis and investigations 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 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.

“These incidents do not represent standard wartime hazards. They represent a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”

The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where a vast number of expectant mothers are stranded.

Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, 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 murdered, 15 abducted, and 101 detained—sometimes while assisting births.

The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns

Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.

Last year, it was reported that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a devastating pattern.

Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to community survival.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide.

Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women having children by the roadside because hospitals were inaccessible.

“Direct shelling fired at 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 trying to alter birthrates.

Ukraine's Ordeal

Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.

“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” asserts 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 is now a potential target,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”

Accountability Evaporates

For the more than 676 million women living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those assaulting reproductive health.

This void of justice has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as 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 increasing drastically, especially among children and pregnant women.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a communication blackout 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 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 destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births lacking professional help.

“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” notes 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 ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”