🔗 Share this article

A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Several had recently given birth, while others were experiencing childbirth.

On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he recounts. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”

This brutal attack stands as a particularly egregious examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.

Rights organizations have labeled it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.

An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care

Despite every significant nation have signed the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.

Research and compiled data 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.

“These are not standard wartime hazards. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”

The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of pregnant women are trapped.

Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births.

A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health

These figures likely represent a grave undercount, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.

Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a devastating pattern.

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

The Situation in 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 accusations of genocidal acts.

Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported 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 trying to alter birthrates.

Ukraine's Ordeal

Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.

“The attacks on us are intentional,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.

“The reality is, every facility can be under attack now,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”

A Culture of Impunity

For the over half a billion females living close to deadly warfare, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.

This void of justice has led to a “culture of impunity,” explains 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 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 scarce because of 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 faced detention, death, or harm 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 shatters health systems. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing 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 violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” says 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 often been cited as an excuse.”