UNITED NATIONS — The war in Sudan has created the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis with over 30 million people needing aid this year, 16 million of them children trying to survive in dire conditions, the head of the U.N. children’s agency said Thursday.
With no end in sight to the nearly two-year conflict, Catherine Russell told the U.N. Security Council that children in Sudan are enduring “unimaginable suffering and horrific violence.”
An estimated 1.3 million children live in places where famine is occurring, and more than 770,000 children are expected to suffer “severe acute malnutrition” this year — and without aid many of them will die, she said.
Sudan plunged into conflict in April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including the vast western Darfur region.
Since then, at least 20,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher, and more than 14 million have been driven from their homes.
The UNICEF executive director said 80% of the more than 900 grave incidents against children reported in the last six months of 2024 were killings or maimings, primarily in Darfur, Khartoum and Gezira province. “Sadly, we know these numbers are just a fraction of the reality,” she said.
Russell said sexual violence used to terrorize the Sudanese population is pervasive, with an estimated 12.1 million women and girls — and increasingly men and boys — at risk right now. She said this is an 80% increase from last year.
According to data UNICEF analyzed from groups providing services in Sudan, there were 221 reported cases of rape against children in 2024 in nine provinces, she said. UNICEF estimates that 67% of rape victims were girls and 33% boys.
“In 16 of the recorded cases, the children were under the age of five. Four were babies under the age of one,” Russell said.
She stressed that this is only a glimpse of what UNICEF knows is a far larger crisis, with survivors or their families often unwilling or unable to come forward.
Christopher Lockyear, secretary-general of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, who was in Khartoum province six weeks ago, told the council that both sides in the conflict are compounding the suffering of civilians.
Government forces have indiscriminately bombed populated areas, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and allied militias have engaged in systematic sexual violence, abductions, mass killings, the looting of humanitarian aid and occupation of medical facilities, he said.
“Both sides have laid siege to towns, destroyed vital civilian infrastructure, and blocked humanitarian aid,” he said.
Lockyear said the Security Council has passed resolutions calling for an end to the conflict but has failed to translate its demands into action. What’s needed today, he said, is a new compact that protects civilians, guarantees aid organizations full access to deliver food and assistance to the needy, and “ensures the response remains independent from political interference.” He said it must be “underpinned by a robust accountability mechanism.”
He told reporters after the briefing that he heard some positive comments from members of the 15-nation Security Council, “and I hope that translates into something practical.”
With the Trump administration cutting off most foreign aid, U.S. deputy ambassador Dorothy Shea said Secretary of State Marco Rubio has approved a waiver for emergency food, medicine, shelter and other assistance, including for Sudan, but gave no figures.
Russell said UNICEF estimates it will need $1 billion this year to deliver lifesaving support to 8.7 million vulnerable children in Sudan.
Lockyear said he can only assume that the aid cuts by the Trump administration “are going to further damage the humanitarian situation in Sudan.”