Thirty women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a prime example of the deteriorating protection for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have signed the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records 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 natural consequences of war. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of pregnant women are trapped.
Deaths have occurred, prevented from accessing care, or made to have their babies in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many conflict zones, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are obliterating maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Direct shelling targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“We are being singled out,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and a stark lack of legal accountability for those attacking childbirth services.
This void of justice has created a “culture of impunity,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from 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, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” says a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”
