Thirty women were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Among them were new mothers, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as among the worst examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a stark illustration of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are particularly at risk due to their need for locally available medical care.
An investigation of records uncover an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not natural consequences of war. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of expectant mothers are stranded.
Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
The numbers are probably a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, analysis showed that 50% of 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 wrecking hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect 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 are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling targeting 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 seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“We are being singled out,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those targeting maternity care.
This void of justice has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially 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 spiking dangerously, 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 damaged a maternity hospital, resulting in tragic loss of life.
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
The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” says a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
