Dozens of women 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 experiencing childbirth.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he recounts. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the collapse in safety for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data reveal an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of pregnant women are trapped.
Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis in Maternal Health
These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents covered by the media. In many areas of fighting, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth resided in a war zone. This underscores a devastating pattern.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind genocide allegations.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women giving birth in rubble because hospitals could not be reached.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied 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 hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has led to a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area was isolated from 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“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 break societal cohesion,” notes a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
