🔗 Share this article

Dozens of women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Among them were new mothers, 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. “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 appalling incident stands as a particularly egregious examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, leaving dead 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 Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.

An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services

Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.

Data analysis and investigations reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.

“These are not natural consequences of war. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”

The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of pregnant women are trapped.

Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been murdered, 15 abducted, and 101 arrested—sometimes during medical procedures.

The Global Crisis in Maternal Health

Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.

Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.

In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.

Conditions within Gaza

In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for accusations of genocidal acts.

Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women delivering babies amidst ruins 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 denied deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.

The Crisis in Ukraine

Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births taking place in basements and extreme psychological pressure leading to birth complications.

“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 can be under attack now,” notes 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 near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those targeting maternity care.

This lack of accountability has led to a “culture of impunity,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”

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 restricted due to a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, resulting in tragic loss of life.

In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire 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

A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.

“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 break societal cohesion,” notes 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 ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”