🔗 Share this article

Thirty women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Several had recently given birth, while others were experiencing childbirth.

Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “There were cries of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”

This horrifying event stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions.

Rights organizations have described it as “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare in multiple global hotspots.

An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services

While all major powers have signed the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of violence targeting health services. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.

An investigation of records reveal an shocking trend: 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.

“These are not standard wartime hazards. They constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”

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

Mothers have lost their lives, prevented from accessing care, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been killed, 15 abducted, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.

A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns

The numbers are probably a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.

Last year, it was reported that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.

Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to community survival.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in accusations of genocidal acts.

Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children continue to die from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible.

“Direct shelling hitting 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.

Ukraine's Ordeal

Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.

“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 truth of the matter is, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”

Accountability Evaporates

For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.

This lack of accountability has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by preventing births.”

Other Conflict Zones

In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition rising sharply, especially among children and pregnant women.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, causing fatalities among patients and staff.

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

Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births lacking professional help.

“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” notes a legal researcher.

“Safeguards are not guaranteed 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.”