🔗 Share this article

Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.

On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he recounts. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”

This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers forced their way into the building, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.

Rights organizations have labeled it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.

A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services

Despite every significant nation are signatories to the international laws of war, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.

Research and compiled data uncover an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 violent acts against 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 deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”

The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.

Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.

A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health

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 50% of women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances resided in a war zone. This underscores a catastrophic reality.

Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in declaring certain actions a genocide.

Following truces, doctors report that women and children continue to die from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women having children by the roadside 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 contested deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.

Ukraine's Ordeal

Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.

“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.

“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”

A Culture of Impunity

For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those targeting maternity care.

This absence of consequences has fostered a “culture of impunity,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute 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 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, causing fatalities among patients and staff.

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

A large proportion of mother deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births without skilled assistance.

“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to destroy community bonds,” notes 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 ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has now become a standard defence.”