Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “There were cries of women and children,” he recounts. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as among the worst examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers forced their way into the building, 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 vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Although world powers have signed the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are particularly at risk due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations reveal 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 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not standard wartime hazards. They represent a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless 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 maternal health workers have been murdered, 15 kidnapped, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, analysis showed that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in accusations of genocidal acts.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes targeting 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 seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“We are being singled out,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility can be under attack now,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris may hit 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 fostered a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, 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 had been cut off 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 scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed 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 averted with basic healthcare, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted speaks to a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” observes 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.”
