Dozens of women were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Present at the hospital after dark, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, lived to tell the tale. “There were cries of women and children,” he recounts. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”
This brutal attack stands as one of the most shocking examples in the two-year civil war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have labeled it “a crime beyond words,” and a stark illustration of the vanishing safeguards for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Although world powers have signed the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 bombardments of hospitals and delivery wards.
“These incidents do not represent standard wartime hazards. They constitute a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of women bearing children are confined.
Deaths have occurred, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents documented publicly. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, it was reported that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are obliterating hospitals and wards, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights 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 are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women having children by the roadside because hospitals were inaccessible.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or aiming to influence 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 birth complications.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” says the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“The truth of the matter is, every facility is now a potential target,” notes a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the more than 676 million women living within range of fighting, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “environment where anything goes,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Additional Hotspots
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 restricted due to a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
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
The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to destroy community bonds,” 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 increasingly been used as a justification.”
