Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “There were cries 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 two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have labeled it “a crime beyond words,” and a clear case of the collapse in safety for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed 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. Mothers in labor are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 violent acts against 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 systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of pregnant women are trapped.
Women have been killed, prevented from accessing care, or forced to give birth in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many areas of fighting, communications are sparse.
Last year, it was reported that one in two mothers who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.
“Direct shelling fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies 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.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility is now a potential target,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those assaulting reproductive health.
This lack of accountability has led to a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, 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 increasing drastically, especially among children and pregnant women.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
The majority of childbirth fatalities 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 devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: 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 ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”
