Thirty women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility 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, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he explains. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This horrifying event stands as among the worst examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have called it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the deteriorating protection for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations uncover an shocking trend: 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 inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are trapped.
Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 taken hostage, 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 documented publicly. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, it was reported that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences 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 medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women giving birth in rubble because hospitals could not be reached.
“We’ve had rockets hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“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.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the more than 676 million women living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has created a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Other Conflict Zones
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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” observes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has now become a standard defence.”
