🔗 Share this article

Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Among them were new mothers, while others were in the midst of labor.

On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.”

This horrifying event stands as a particularly egregious examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Combatants raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.

Rights organizations have called it “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the collapse in safety for civilians living amidst warfare in several nations at war.

A Record of Violence Against Maternal Care

Despite every significant nation have agreed to the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has witnessed an unprecedented spike of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are highly exposed due to their need for locally available medical care.

An investigation of records show an unprecedented scale of attacks: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to 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 inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.”

The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of women bearing children are confined.

Women have been killed, prevented from accessing care, or made to have their babies in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 abducted, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures.

A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health

These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many areas of fighting, communications are sparse.

Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who perished while pregnant or giving birth were in a conflict area. This underscores a catastrophic reality.

Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to societal repopulation and recovery.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as one reason behind accusations of genocidal acts.

Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children succumb from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Accounts describe women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals could not be reached.

“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 maternity and neonatal facilities have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery.

“Russia is targeting us deliberately,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. The government has disputed deliberately targeting civilians.

“The reality is, every facility is now a potential target,” states a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris could impact a hospital.”

A Culture of Impunity

For the over half a billion females living close to deadly warfare, there are few safeguards and a stark lack of legal accountability for those targeting maternity care.

This lack of accountability has fostered a “culture of impunity,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”

Additional Hotspots

In El Fasher, the area had been cut off 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 restricted due to 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 been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.

The End of Safe Deliveries

A large proportion of mother deaths are preventable with routine care, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, resulting in risky home births devoid of emergency care.

“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted speaks to a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” 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 now become a standard defence.”