🔗 Share this article

Dozens of women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were experiencing childbirth.

Working that 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. We who were able to escape, did so.”

This appalling incident stands as among the worst examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.

Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians living amidst warfare in multiple global hotspots.

An Unprecedented Assault Against Maternal Care

Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.

Research and compiled data uncover an shocking trend: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to places and people associated with childbirth 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 assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.

Mothers have lost their lives, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 arrested—sometimes during medical procedures.

The Global Crisis in Maternal Health

These figures likely represent a substantial underreporting, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, information is scarce.

Last year, analysis showed that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.

Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind accusations of genocidal acts.

Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached.

“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 seeking to affect birthrates.

The Crisis in Ukraine

Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground 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 reality is, every facility is now a potential target,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”

A Culture of Impunity

For the hundreds of millions of women living close to deadly warfare, there are minimal protections and a stark lack of legal accountability for those targeting maternity care.

This absence of consequences has created a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”

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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, causing fatalities among patients and staff.

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 avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births lacking professional help.

“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to destroy community bonds,” observes 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 ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”