Thirty women had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, reportedly killing more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against 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 constitute a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or made to have their babies in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 arrested—sometimes while assisting births.
The Global Crisis in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances were in a conflict area. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for genocide allegations.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” claims 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,” states a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has created a “culture of impunity,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
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 restricted due to a communication blackout 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.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted speaks to a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a means of intimidation and to tear apart the social fabric,” notes a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”
