Dozens of women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Several had recently given birth, while others were experiencing childbirth.
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 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 ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 individuals receiving care and their families.
Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians caught in conflict zones in several nations at war.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation have agreed to the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are particularly at risk due to their need for locally available medical care.
Data analysis and investigations show an shocking trend: 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.
“This is not inevitable outcomes of conflict. They form a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these incidents have happened in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, 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 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes during medical procedures.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a grave undercount, as they are limited to incidents covered by the media. In many conflict zones, information is scarce.
Last year, findings indicated that one in two mothers who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a catastrophic reality.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to societal repopulation and recovery.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations.
Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to severe deficits of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“We’ve had rockets hitting 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 seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 maternity and neonatal facilities have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births taking place in basements and skyrocketing stress leading to problems during delivery.
“We are being singled out,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.
“The reality is, every facility can be under attack now,” comments 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 few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care.
This void of justice has led to a “culture of impunity,” says a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to 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, 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 End of Safe Deliveries
Most maternal deaths are preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a broader and more sinister pattern: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” 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 ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
