A group of thirty mothers were huddled for safety in a maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were experiencing childbirth.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen forced their way into the building, reportedly killing more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care
Despite every significant nation are signatories to the international laws of war, which commit them to defending civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of assaults against medical infrastructure. Women undergoing childbirth are particularly at risk due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records show an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to 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 standard wartime hazards. They represent a systematic assault on childbirth.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of women bearing children are confined.
Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or compelled to deliver in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health
Statistics are thought to be a significant underestimate, as they capture solely incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited.
Last year, analysis showed that one in two mothers who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability.
The Situation in 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.
Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals were out of reach.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says 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 maternity and neonatal facilities have been attacked and rendered unusable in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births taking place in basements and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” notes 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 rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This absence of consequences has fostered a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like forced pregnancy or forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by preventing births.”
Other Conflict Zones
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 scarce because of a lack of access from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, causing fatalities among patients and staff.
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 preventable with routine care, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a tool for terror and to break societal cohesion,” says a legal researcher.
“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”
