Thirty women had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence 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 violence targeting health services. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records reveal an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to 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 countless of expectant mothers are stranded.
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 murdered, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, analysis showed that one in two mothers who died during pregnancy or childbirth resided in a war zone. This underscores a devastating pattern.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, creating a grave danger to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind accusations of genocidal acts.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached.
“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 denied deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
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 extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility can be under attack now,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, 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 rare trials for atrocities for those targeting maternity care.
This absence of consequences has led to a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 restricted due to a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
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 Collapse of Safe Childbirth
Most maternal deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards speaks to a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” says 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 ‘militarily advantageous’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
