Darfur’s children living on a thin line between abandonment and hope

GENEVA/PORT SUDAN, 30 January 2026 - "In Darfur today, reaching a single child can take days of negotiation, security clearances, and travel across sand roads under shifting frontlines. But the work is critical, particularly in places like Tawila - from where I have just returned - where hundreds of thousands of children have fled unspeakable violence. It is also where their families have built an entire city from sticks, hay, and plastic sheeting. Nothing about this crisis is simple: every movement is hard-won, every delivery fragile.

"And still, under these conditions, support is getting through. In just two weeks, UNICEF and partners vaccinated over 140,000 children, treated thousands for illness and malnutrition, restored safe water to tens of thousands, opened temporary classrooms, and provided food, protection, and psychosocial care. 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.

"I have just returned from a 10-day mission to Darfur. Even with years of experience working in emergencies, what I witnessed was unlike anything before. The scale of displacement, the fragmentation of the conflict, and the collapse of essential services have created a situation where every child is living on the brink.

"Travel across Darfur is extremely difficult. Roads are mostly sand and stones, and every movement requires multiple permissions, and careful planning to ensure the safety of our teams. None of it is straightforward. But it is the only way to reach children who have had only very limited access to support for months.

"Nothing prepared me for what I saw in Tawila. I had been briefed: over 500,000 to 600,000 people are sheltering there. But standing inside that vast expanse of makeshift shelters - hay, sticks, plastic sheeting - was overwhelming. It felt like an entire city uprooted and rebuilt out of necessity and fear. It is a city rebuilt out of desperation, larger than my hometown Helsinki and every one of those families is there because they had no choice but to flee.

"Within that immense space, there were moments that will stay with me.

"My colleagues and I met Doha, a teenage girl who had just arrived from Al Fasher with her aunt and siblings. Before the war, she had been studying English. Her name refers to the soft light just after sunrise, and she embodies that image - hopeful and determined. She told us she dreams of returning to school and eventually teaching English to other children.

"At a nutrition site, we met the aunt of a little girl named Fatima, who had been brought for treatment for malnutrition. Fatima's mother, her sister, had been lost to the conflict. The aunt held the child close, doing everything she could to keep her safe.

"And at a centre for women and girls, I met mothers who had nothing left. They told me they had no food, no blankets, no warm clothing for their children. "The children are freezing," one mother said. "We have nothing to cover them with."

"These personal stories reflect only a small part of a much wider situation in North Darfur.

"Sudan is the world's largest humanitarian emergency, yet one of the least visible. Limited access, a complex conflict, and competing global crises mean the suffering of millions of children is going unseen.

"What I witnessed is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding on a massive scale.

"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."