UN warns Darfur children at breaking point as hunger and violence intensify
Geneva — Five million children across Sudan’s Darfur region are facing extreme hunger, violence and displacement as the country’s civil war enters its fourth year, UNICEF said on Tuesday, issuing a rare emergency “Child Alert” to signal that the humanitarian crisis has reached a critical level.
The warning is the first Child Alert issued by the United Nations children’s agency for Darfur in 20 years and is used only in the most severe emergencies to draw urgent international attention.“Children are at a breaking point across the region. Childhood is again defined by fear, by loss,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Port Sudan.“Children are bearing the heaviest weight of the war in Darfur.
Children are being killed and maimed, uprooted from their homes and pushed into extreme hunger, disease and trauma,” he said.Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan, has remained one of the epicenters of the conflict that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The fighting has included ethnically driven killings, widespread displacement and repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure, reviving memories of the earlier Darfur conflict that began in 2003 when rebels rose against Sudan’s government and state-backed Arab militias launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign.
UNICEF said homes, schools and health facilities across the region have been burned, damaged or destroyed, leaving children without access to education, medical care or basic safety.The agency warned that despite the worsening crisis, international attention and funding remain far below what is needed.
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 significant increase compared with the same period last year, UNICEF said.
The most severe impact has been recorded in Al-Fashir, the long-besieged capital of North Darfur, where at least 1,300 children have been killed or maimed since April 2024.UNICEF also reported cases of sexual violence, child abductions and forced recruitment of minors by armed groups in the area.
Acute malnutrition has worsened sharply, with famine-level conditions confirmed in two additional areas of North Darfur in February, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Aid agencies have repeatedly warned that restricted humanitarian access, continued shelling and the collapse of essential services are accelerating the risk of mass starvation, particularly among children and displaced families.
The conflict has displaced millions across Sudan and created one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies, with Darfur once again at the center of the crisis.
