Thirty women had taken refuge in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, at the onset of the horrific violence. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “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. 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 clear case of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas 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 seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Mothers in labor are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care.
An investigation of records uncover an shocking trend: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“This is not natural consequences of war. They represent 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.
Women have been killed, denied medical attention, or forced to give birth in deplorable situations. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 arrested—sometimes during medical procedures.
A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns
These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents documented publicly. In many war-torn areas, communications are sparse.
Last year, findings indicated that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend.
Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, posing a long-term threat to demographic stability.
Conditions within Gaza
In Gaza, the ruinous consequences on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from inadequate care, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women having children by the roadside because hospitals could not be reached.
“Our facility has endured missile strikes targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” explains the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied 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 skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications.
“We are being singled out,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility faces the threat of assault,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris may hit a hospital.”
Accountability Evaporates
For the over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are few safeguards and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those attacking childbirth services.
This absence of consequences has created a “environment where anything goes,” says a human rights lawyer. “Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.”
Additional Hotspots
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 restricted due to a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma hit a neonatal ward, 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
The majority of childbirth fatalities are preventable with routine care, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births without skilled assistance.
“When childbirth centers become intentional targets speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” says a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘prejudicial to the opposing side’, which has often been cited as an excuse.”
