The world is failing Sudan's children

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The world has an unsettling tendency to pick and choose which humanitarian crises are worthy of outrage. Right now, Sudan has fallen through the cracks. As the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (SRF) nears the end of its second year, the agony grows ever more intolerable, with more than 11 million people having fled their homes — over half of them children. It's a catastrophe unfolding in silence. What does this apathy say about our collective conscience?

Sudan's children bear the brunt of it all. Like Gaza's children, they aren't collateral damage; they're direct targets. They're being killed, raped, starved, traumatised and left to fend for themselves in a country where even the basics of life — food, healthcare, education, shelter, even clean water — have collapsed. Far too many have lost their families and are now cast adrift in a world of horrors no child should ever face.

The stories bleeding out of Sudan are gut-wrenching. Mass graves - a chilling snapshot of savagery — hold as many as 500 mutilated bodies, including children. UNICEF reports that over 221 children, including 16 under five years old and four one-year-olds, have been victims of rape.

Starvation is also being weaponised. Sudan faces one of the world's worst child malnutrition crises, with a third of children under five withering away from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), warns UNICEF. How many more withered and wasted bodies must it take to move us?

Meanwhile, humanitarian aid is barely trickling in. The world watches these children waste away in real time and still sits on its hands. In glaring contrast to Ukraine, international aid to Sudan is pitifully inadequate. Why the double standard? The answer is clear: some lives matter more than others.

The healthcare system has also disintegrated, transforming preventable afflictions into death warrants. A cholera outbreak in White Nile State snatched away nearly 100 lives in just weeks, including at least 18 children, because there's no health-sustaining water left.

Armed groups prey on the chaos, pulling Sudan's children into their ranks. They don't just face abandonment; they're being actively funneled into the next generation of war.

And then there's the future - or what's left of it. Schools have been hollowed out, ravaged or turned into military bases. Millions of children have lost access to education, locked in a cycle of poverty, violence and trauma with no way out.

The suffering of Sudanese children is more than a generational tragedy; it's a damning indictment of the international community's failure. This war has unleashed some of the worst violations of international humanitarian law in recent memory.

But this doesn't have to continue. Sudan mustn't be sidelined in global politics. A lasting and internationally supervised ceasefire must be enforced. Not just signed and forgotten, but followed through so aid can effectively reach those who need it most. The world must urgently and meaningfully scale up support for food, healthcare, shelter and education.

It must cut through the red tape because delays are killing people. It must also hold those committing atrocities accountable so that raping, starving, torturing and murdering children doesn't remain a consequence-free crime. And above all, Sudan's children can't be left to fade into oblivion.

Every day without action means another child starves to death, faces being forced into a militia or sees their last shred of safety hang by a thread. These children aren't mere statistics pushed to the sidelines. They aren't pawns in a geopolitical chess game! They're human beings and their survival must become the world's urgent priority. Or is there anything that could possibly be more important?

The world has blood on its hands. Its nonchalance is killing Sudan's children. That's the brutal truth. Enough. It must end — now. And Sudan must finally blip on the global radar.