Thirty women were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they capture solely incidents covered by the media. In many conflict zones, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are obliterating maternal and neonatal care facilities, posing a long-term threat to community survival.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children continue to die from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women giving birth in rubble because hospitals could not be reached.
“We’ve had rockets targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says 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 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“We are being singled out,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” states a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care.
This lack of accountability has led to a “culture of impunity,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area was isolated from humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition increasing drastically, 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, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
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 Collapse of Safe Childbirth
The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” notes 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 ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”
