Thirty women were seeking shelter in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers forced their way into the building, 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 deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of violence targeting health services. Women undergoing childbirth are exceptionally vulnerable due to their dependence on locally available medical care.
Research and compiled data uncover an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not natural consequences of war. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Women have been killed, prevented from accessing care, or made to have their babies in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 abducted, and 101 arrested—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many areas of fighting, reporting is limited.
Last year, it was reported that half of all women who died during pregnancy or childbirth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from medical shortages, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible.
“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 contested deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility can be under attack now,” states a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living close to deadly warfare, there are scarce guarantees and rare trials for atrocities for those attacking childbirth services.
This lack of accountability has led to a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area was isolated from 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, resulting in tragic loss of life.
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 avoidable with standard medicine, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities 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 may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
