Thirty women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Several had recently given birth, while others were actively in labor.
Working that night, 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 recounts. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have labeled it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Although world powers have agreed to 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 particularly at risk due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data show an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 direct strikes on hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They form a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of expectant mothers are stranded.
Mothers have lost their lives, prevented from accessing care, 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 while assisting births.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are obliterating maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within 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 a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were out of reach.
“We’ve had rockets hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility is now a potential target,” comments 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 near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those targeting maternity care.
This absence of consequences has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, are potentially acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, clinics have been attacked and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war.
The End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” observes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has now become a standard defence.”
