A group of thirty mothers were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as a particularly egregious examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants stormed the facility, leaving dead more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault 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 assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not inevitable outcomes of conflict. 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.
Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, or made to have their babies in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” states a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area was isolated 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 scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
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 preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to destroy community bonds,” says a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”
