Thirty women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. 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, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This brutal attack stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, reportedly killing more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have called it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration 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 have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of attacks on healthcare systems. Mothers in labor are highly exposed 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 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped.
Women have been killed, denied medical attention, or forced to give birth in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 abducted, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
The numbers are probably a grave undercount, as they are limited to incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, analysis showed that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a devastating pattern.
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 part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins 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 rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility can be under attack now,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This void of justice has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area was isolated from humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition spiking dangerously, 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, 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 preventable with routine care, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births lacking professional help.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” observes a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”
