Dozens of women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. 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. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have described it as “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians caught in conflict zones in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the international laws of war, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data show 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.
“These incidents do not represent standard wartime hazards. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been murdered, 15 abducted, 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 only include incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.
Last year, analysis showed that half of all women who died during pregnancy or childbirth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating hospitals and wards, creating a grave danger 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.
Despite periods of calm, 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.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes 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 trying to alter birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “culture of impunity,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off 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 restricted due to a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, resulting in tragic loss of life.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“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,” 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 increasingly been used as a justification.”