🔗 Share this article

Dozens of 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 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. “A massacre was taking place inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.”

This brutal attack stands as among the worst examples in the protracted internal conflict tearing the African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 patients and their companions.

Rights organizations have called it “an unspeakable atrocity,” and a clear case of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in several nations at war.

An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services

Despite every significant nation are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which require them to safeguard civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of attacks on healthcare systems. Mothers in labor are exceptionally vulnerable due to their reliance on locally available medical care.

Research and compiled data show an shocking trend: nearly 300 violent acts against maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women 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 pattern of reproductive violence.”

The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, 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 killed, 15 kidnapped, and 101 detained—sometimes during medical procedures.

The Global Crisis in Maternal Health

These figures likely represent a substantial underreporting, as they capture solely incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.

Last year, findings indicated that half of all women who lost their lives in maternal circumstances lived amidst hostilities. This underscores a horrifying trend.

In addition to the loss of life, these attacks are obliterating critical infrastructure for mothers and babies, jeopardizing the future to societal repopulation and recovery.

The Situation in Gaza

In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as a factor in genocide allegations.

Even after ceasefires, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women giving birth in rubble because hospitals could not be reached.

“Direct shelling fired at the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” says the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or trying to alter birthrates.

The Crisis in Ukraine

Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to maternal health issues.

“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.

“The reality is, 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 over half a billion females living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.

This lack of accountability has led to a “culture of impunity,” explains a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, may constitute 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 rising sharply, especially among children and pregnant women.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is scarce because of a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma damaged a maternity hospital, causing fatalities among patients and staff.

In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have suffered violence over the past two years of civil war.

The Collapse of Safe Childbirth

A large proportion of mother deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, 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.

“The deliberate attack on maternity wards speaks to a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to break societal cohesion,” notes a legal researcher.

“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has now become a standard defence.”