Dozens of women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. 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, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as among the worst examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Combatants stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are particularly at risk due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an shocking trend: 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 are not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, analysis showed that 50% of women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, posing a long-term threat to community survival.
The Situation in 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.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling hitting 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 aiming to influence birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“We are being singled out,” claims 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,” comments 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 scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This lack of accountability has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
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 limited by a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
The majority of childbirth fatalities are preventable with routine care, 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 without skilled assistance.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted indicates a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a means of intimidation 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 may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”
