🔗 Share this article

Thirty women were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.

Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone 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. Militiamen raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.

Rights organizations have described it as “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.

An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services

Although world powers have signed the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their need for locally available medical care.

Research and compiled data 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 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.

“This is not natural consequences of war. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”

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

Women have been killed, prevented from accessing care, or compelled to deliver in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been killed, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births.

A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns

These figures likely represent a grave undercount, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many conflict zones, communications are sparse.

Last year, analysis showed that half of all women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.

In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to societal repopulation and recovery.

Conditions within Gaza

In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind declaring certain actions a genocide.

Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.

“We’ve had rockets fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.

The Crisis in Ukraine

Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births taking place in basements and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.

“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.

“The truth of the matter is, 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 near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care.

This absence of consequences has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as 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 spiking dangerously, 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 hit a neonatal ward, resulting in tragic loss of life.

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

The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, 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 lacking professional help.

“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a tool for terror 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 may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”