A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Several had recently given birth, while others were in the midst of labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “There were cries of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen 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 collapse in safety for civilians living amidst warfare in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not natural consequences of war. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, prevented from accessing care, or forced to give birth in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been murdered, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, it was reported that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.
“Direct shelling targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains 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 maternity and neonatal facilities have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility is now a potential target,” states a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This void of justice has led to a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area was isolated 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to tear apart the social fabric,” observes 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 ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
