One in two children in Sudan are in war-affected areas, according to Save the Children

The NGO regrets that the children “have suffered in an unimaginable way” and warns that “the situation has reached a boiling point”

April 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –

More than ten million Sudanese children, equivalent to one in two, have been in active war zones and less than five kilometers from the points of clashes that broke out nearly a year ago between the Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as Save the Children reported this Wednesday.

An analysis carried out by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) together with Save the Children shows that this figure represents an increase of 60 percent compared to the 6.6 million children who were in this situation in the first month of the war. , which reveals the expansion of the conflict in the country.

Thus, it reflects that at least five million children have been repeatedly exposed to battles, bombings and attacks with explosives and missiles, while highlighting that the majority of violent incidents have taken place in the most populated cities in the country.

“These results show how dangerously close to death so many children in Sudan have come over the past year of war,” said Save the Children's Sudan director Arif Noor.

“The children of Sudan have suffered in unimaginable ways: they have seen killings, massacres, streets littered with bullets, bodies and houses bombed, while living in the all-too-real fear that they themselves could be killed, injured, recruited to fight or subjected to sexual violence,” he explained.

In this way, Noor has stated that “the situation has reached a boiling point” and has noted that “millions more children do not have access to adequate food, 3.8 million are malnourished and thousands more are at risk of dying.” of diseases, since the country's health system is practically collapsed.

“Not a single boy or girl has been able to go to school in the last year. No child should go through what the Sudanese are going through,” he said, before warning that it is possible that “230,000 boys, girls and new mothers may die of hunger if urgent measures are not taken.

Jouman, 16 years old and a refugee in Cairo after fleeing with her family in November, says that “the fighting was very hard.” “We never imagined that we would flee Sudan,” says the teenager, who studies at a school for Sudanese refugees supported by Save the Children with resources and teaching materials.

In this sense, she expresses her desire to return to Sudan, where she wants to be a doctor. “I had good days in Sudan. I would go to school, then come home and spend time with the family and (when I was with my friend), we would have fun and study.”

“IMPROVE HUMANITARIAN ACCESS”

For this reason, the NGO has called on the international leaders who will meet next week in the French capital, Paris, to address the conflict in the African country “they must do everything in their power to improve humanitarian access, protect children and avoid famine.

The organization has also highlighted that “they must urgently increase funding, as the international humanitarian response remains 95 percent underfunded,” given that the United Nations response so far has a deficit of more than $2.5 billion. (about 2,300 million euros).

The summit will be organized on April 15 by the European Union (EU), France and Germany to respond to the serious humanitarian crisis in Sudan, with the main objective of obtaining financing to cover the response and getting the Army and the RSF to commit to allow humanitarian access to the population.

The war between the Sudanese Army and the RSF broke out in April 2023 due to strong disagreements regarding the integration process of the paramilitary group within the Armed Forces, a situation that caused the derailment of the transition opened in 2019 after the overthrow of the then president, Omar Hassan al Bashir, in a military coup.

The conflict has left more than six million internally displaced people – adding to the nearly three million previously displaced – and has pushed more than 1.7 million people to cross into neighboring countries. Furthermore, the World Food Program (WFP) warned in March that the war could become “the largest hunger crisis in the world,” after already being the largest displacement crisis worldwide.