Dozens of women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were in the midst of labor.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as among the worst examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a stark illustration of the collapse in safety for civilians living amidst warfare in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent natural consequences of war. They form a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, 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 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many areas of fighting, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that half of all women who died during pregnancy or childbirth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in accusations of genocidal acts.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children continue to die from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling fired at 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 seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility can be under attack now,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are minimal protections and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This lack of accountability has led to a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
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 restricted due to a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
A large proportion of mother 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, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates 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.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
