UNICEF: Sudanese Children Living a Nightmare
Agencies – Sudan Events
The UN children Fund (UNICEF) said Sudan is facing the largest child displacement crisis in the world, and warned that the future of more than 24 million Sudanese children is in danger due to the humanitarian catastrophe of “epic proportions” that has been ravaging the country since the outbreak of war last April.
UNICEF Representative in Sudan, Mandeep O’Brien, said that Sudanese children are living a nightmare, and warned of the risk that their suffering will turn into a forgotten crisis and become a generational disaster, which threatens the future of all Sudanese children.
O’Brien added in an interview from Port Sudan, published by (United Nations News), that 14 million children are in urgent need of life-saving assistance in the areas of health, nutrition, learning, water, and protection support.
O’Brien stated that more than 3.5 million children in Sudan have been forced to flee their homes since the beginning of the war, and more than 7.4 million children cannot obtain safe drinking water that is absolutely necessary to survive and thrive, and that about two million children are in urgent need of life-saving vaccines to protect them from life-threatening diseases, while more than 3 million children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, which makes Sudan one of the highest rates of malnutrition in the world, and among these, there are 700 thousand children who suffer from severe acute malnutrition, which means If they do not get life-saving medical treatment, they will die.
O’Brien stressed that 19 million school-age children do not go to classrooms, and this pushes Sudan to the brink of becoming one of the worst learning crises in the world.
The UNICEF official explained that if this situation continues, Sudan will face a lifelong learning loss of $26 billion.
The official stressed that since the war began in April, UNICEF has remained on the ground and continued to provide services with partners, and noted that Sudan needs more global attention, from the international community, and from the media.
“This war must stop now,” O’Brien said, adding “Sudan is in dire need of peace.”
