A group of thirty mothers were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were in the midst of labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations uncover an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been murdered, 15 abducted, and 101 detained—sometimes during medical procedures.
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 war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a devastating pattern.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are destroying critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, posing a long-term threat to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested 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 struck and ruined in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“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 faces the threat of assault,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the hundreds of millions of women living within range of fighting, there are scarce guarantees and a stark lack of legal accountability for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition rising sharply, especially among children and pregnant women.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
The majority of childbirth fatalities are avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” observes a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”
