🔗 Share this article

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 actively in labor.

Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he recounts. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”

This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Combatants forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.

Rights organizations have labeled it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.

An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care

While all major powers are signatories to the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.

Data analysis and investigations uncover an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 violent acts against 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 standard wartime hazards. They form a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”

The majority of these attacks have taken place in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped.

Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes while assisting births.

A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health

Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they capture solely incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.

Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.

In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to community survival.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for accusations of genocidal acts.

Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.

“Direct shelling fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.

The Crisis in Ukraine

Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.

“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 is now a potential target,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”

Accountability Evaporates

For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.

This void of justice has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute 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 increasing drastically, 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, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.

In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked 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

A large proportion of mother deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births devoid of emergency care.

“When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to break societal cohesion,” observes 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 increasingly been used as a justification.”