People across Sudan are in the middle of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with the children hit hardest by the fighting that's now in its third year.
Over 17 million Sudanese children are out of school, 5,000 have been kidnapped or missing and 3,000 children have died in the war which broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on April 15, 2023, according to Sudan's National Council for Child Welfare.
The violence against children in Sudan has reached "extreme levels" in 2023, according to the U.N.
A U.N. report highlighted a 21 percent increase in grave violations against children in that year.
The report placed several entities on the blacklist for killing and maiming children and for carrying out attacks on schools and hospitals.
"Before the war, we had 7 million children out of school. Since the war [started], we have 17 million children who are not in schools. Again, if we looked at the data before the war, we knew that around 3 million children were acutely malnourished. Now since the war, [it's] almost close to 4 million children acutely malnourished," said Mandeep O'brien, the United Nations Children's Fund Representative to Sudan.
Child abuse has worsened since the outbreak of the war. Reports showed children have been forcibly recruited as fighters, and cases of sexual abuse and slavery have increased.
"We verified tens of cases of children who were forced by the RSF to join the conflict. Some of them have returned to their families and some were killed in the conflict and many were kidnapped. The scale of the violence is large and scary. We need huge collaboration in order to prevent a bigger crisis," said Abdelgadir Abuh, secretary general of Sudan's National Council for Child Welfare.
International efforts to mediate an end to the conflict in Sudan have not yielded much. Across the country, millions continue to suffer the impact of the continuing violence.
For children across Sudan, an end to the conflict cannot come soon enough. Every day brings with it new challenges and more suffering.
But like many children in other conflict zones, they too hope that peace will be restored in their country so that they can once again just be children and enjoy learning and playing as they used to before.
Children in Sudan struggling for survival amid health, food crises
Children in Sudan struggling for survival amid health, food crises
