Thirty women had taken refuge in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Among them were new mothers, while others were actively in labor.
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. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This horrifying event stands as among the worst examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have called it “a crime beyond words,” and a clear case of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of violence targeting health services. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data 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 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not standard wartime hazards. They form a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of expectant mothers are stranded.
Women have been killed, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes while assisting births.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents reported in news outlets. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, analysis showed that 50% of women who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to community survival.
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 accusations of genocidal acts.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached.
“We’ve had rockets targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has contested deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.
The Crisis in Ukraine
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility is now a potential target,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those assaulting reproductive health.
This lack of accountability has led to a “culture of impunity,” explains 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 spiking dangerously, especially among children and pregnant women.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is scarce because of a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
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
A large proportion of mother deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric,” observes a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”
