Thirty women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Several had recently given birth, while others were actively in labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Combatants forced their way into the building, reportedly killing more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have labeled 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.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Although world powers have signed the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations uncover an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of expectant mothers are stranded.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 taken hostage, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
The numbers are probably a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who lost their lives in maternal circumstances resided in a war zone. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached.
“We’ve had rockets fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected 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. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” asserts 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 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 over half a billion females living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has created a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
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 lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, hospitals have come under fire 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
A large proportion of mother deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war shatters health systems. 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 speaks to a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror 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 ‘militarily advantageous’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
