Reuters
Geneva, Updated At : 05:41 PM Apr 28, 2026 IST
Five million children across Sudan’s Darfur region are facing extreme deprivation, UNICEF said, issuing an emergency “Child Alert” as the country’s civil war enters its fourth year. The alert — used sparingly and issued for Darfur for the first time in 20 years — signals the situation has reached a critical threshold.
“Children are at a breaking point across the region, childhood is again defined by fear, by loss. Homes have been burned, schools and health facilities have been damaged or destroyed,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, said by video link from Port Sudan. He added that children are bearing the heaviest weight of the war: being killed and maimed, uprooted from their homes and pushed into extreme hunger, disease and trauma.
Darfur in western Sudan has been a focal point of violence, including ethnically charged killings, since the wider civil war erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The region also suffered atrocities and mass displacement after fighting that escalated in 2003, when rebels clashed with the government and Arab militias were used to suppress the revolt.
UNICEF warned the current crisis has attracted far less global attention than the earlier conflict. Its humanitarian appeal for Sudan this year is only 16% funded. Across Sudan, at least 160 children were reportedly killed and 85 injured in the first three months of 2026, a sharp rise from the same period last year.
The longest-suffering city of al-Fashir has seen the gravest impact: since April 2024, UNICEF says at least 1,300 children were killed or maimed, with reports of sexual violence, abductions and recruitment by armed groups. In February, the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) found acute malnutrition had reached famine levels in two more areas of North Darfur.
