Reaching a child in Darfur is ‘hard-won and fragile’, says UNICEF

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Reaching a single child in Sudan’s Darfur region can take days of negotiations, security clearances and travel across sandy roads that cut through shifting frontlines, UNICEF warned Friday – as children live “on the brink” of survival.

Briefing journalists in Geneva on Friday, Eva Hinds, the UN child agency’s Chief of Communications, described a humanitarian response that is fragile, painstaking and essential, following her return from a 10-day mission to Darfur.

For nearly three years, rival militaries who were former allies have been battling for control of the shattered country, engaged in a brutal civil conflict that has destablised multiple countries bordering Sudan. 

“In Darfur today, reaching a single child can take days of negotiation, security clearances, and travel across sand roads under shifting frontlines,” she said. “Nothing about this crisis is simple: every movement is hard-won, every delivery fragile.”

City built from fear

Ms. Hinds had just returned from Tawila, in North Darfur, where she witnessed what she described as an entire city rebuilt from desperation. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled violence and erected makeshift shelters from sticks, hay and plastic sheeting.

“Over 500,000 to 600,000 people are sheltering there,” she reported. “But standing inside that vast expanse of makeshift shelters was overwhelming. It felt like an entire city uprooted and rebuilt out of necessity and fear.”

Despite the insecurity and logistical hurdles, UNICEF and its partners are still reaching children.

Effective aid operation

In just two weeks, more than 140,000 children were vaccinated, thousands treated for illness and malnutrition, safe water restored to tens of thousands, and temporary classrooms opened.

“It is painstaking, precarious work – delivered one convoy, one clinic, one classroom at a time – but for children in Darfur, it is the thin line between being abandoned and being reached,” Ms Hinds said.

She described meeting Doha, a teenage girl newly arrived from Al Fasher, who dreams of returning to school and one day teaching English. “Her name refers to the soft light just after sunrise,” Ms Hinds said. “She embodies that image – hopeful and determined.”

‘The children are freezing’

At a nutrition site, she met Fatima, a young girl being treated for malnutrition after losing her mother to the conflict.

At a centre for women and girls, mothers spoke of having no food, blankets or warm clothes for their children. “The children are freezing,” one mother told her. “We have nothing to cover them with.”

“These personal stories reflect only a small part of a much wider situation,” Ms Hinds said, stressing that Sudan is now the world’s largest humanitarian emergency, yet one of the least visible.

“What I witnessed is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding on a massive scale,” she warned.

“Sudan’s children urgently need international attention and decisive action. Without it, the horrors facing the country’s youngest and most vulnerable will only deepen.”