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 in the midst of labor.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as a particularly egregious examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
An investigation of records uncover an unprecedented scale of attacks: 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.
“These are not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been slain, 15 abducted, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents reported in news outlets. In many conflict zones, reporting is limited.
Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from medical shortages, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Direct shelling targeting 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 seeking to affect birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility can be under attack now,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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 scarce because of a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed 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
The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, 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 lacking professional help.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards points toward a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to destroy community bonds,” observes a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
