Five million children face extreme deprivation in Darfur, UNICEF warns

Five million children across Sudan’s Darfur region are facing extreme deprivation, the United Nations children’s agency said on Tuesday, issuing an emergency warning as the civil war in the country enters its fourth year.

The warning, known as a “Child Alert”, is used sparingly by UNICEF and is designed to signal that a situation has reached a critical threshold. It is the first time the agency has issued one for Darfur in 20 years.

“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, told reporters.

“Children are bearing the heaviest weight of the war in Darfur, children are beng 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 been a focal point of violence, including ethnically charged killings, in the civil war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The region was also the scene of atrocities and mass displacement in a conflict that escalated in 2003, after rebels took up arms against Sudan’s government, which used Arab militias to suppress the revolt.

Rising child casualties and humanitarian gap

Despite the deepening crisis, UNICEF said it had attracted little global attention compared with the conflict two decades ago, with the agency’s humanitarian appeal for Sudan this year only 16% funded.

Across Sudan, at least 160 children were reportedly killed and 85 injured in the first three months of 2026, marking a significant increase compared with the same period last year, UNICEF said.

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UNICEF noted that the gravest impact on children has been in the long-besieged city of al-Fashir, where at least 1,300 children have been killed or maimed since April 2024.

The agency also reported cases of sexual violence, abductions and the recruitment of children by armed groups.

Acute malnutrition reached famine levels in two additional areas of North Darfur in February, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

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Sudan Darfur crisis UNICEF Child protection Humanitarian Crisis Sudanese Army child malnutrition al-Fashir violence