Dozens of women were huddled for safety 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.
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 states. “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 North African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault 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 assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 violent acts against places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent natural consequences of war. They represent a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where a vast number of expectant mothers are stranded.
Women have been killed, prevented from accessing care, or made to have their babies in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 abducted, 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 significant underestimate, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for genocide allegations.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence 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 forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“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 faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This void of justice has led to a “culture of impunity,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off 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 communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
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
Most maternal deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, 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 lacking professional help.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to tear apart the social fabric,” notes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has now become a standard defence.”
