A group of thirty mothers had taken refuge 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 explains. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”
This appalling incident stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers 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 stark illustration of the collapse in safety for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Although world powers have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of violence targeting health services. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 incidents targeting or hindering 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 natural consequences of war. They form a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these attacks have taken place in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
The numbers are probably a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, 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 devastating pattern.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are wrecking critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, creating a grave danger to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were inaccessible.
“We’ve had rockets targeting 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 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.
“The attacks on us are intentional,” asserts 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,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has created a “culture of impunity,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Violence targeting childbirth, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from 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 inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, 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 Collapse of Safe Childbirth
Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, 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.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to tear apart the social fabric,” says a legal researcher.
“Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
