Darfur follow-ups: Sudan
Special information revealed that some 8 thousand children have been recruited to participate in the war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces since mid-April.
The figures available to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) indicate that more than 435 children were killed and at least 2025 injured during the conflict between the parties.
A former official of the former Ministry of Social Welfare and Children’s Affairs said: “The current conflict has seen the worst wave of violations against children and at least 8,000 of them have been recruited to take part in the fighting.”
Last September, the army announced the release and surrender of 30 child soldiers to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who were among 230 children captured in battles with rapid support.
The Children’s Welfare Council last September called for the RSF to be punished before the International Criminal Court for recruiting 6 thousands of children, including those who had died while others suffered serious injuries.
The former official confirmed that some child soldiers had been forcibly transferred from Darfur states to participate in the war in Khartoum according to special assurances received from United Nations officials.
Statistics on the number of children killed during the war were not available and accurate in relation to the current situation and the persistence and expansion of clashes in several new areas.
The number was projected to rise as warfights continued and intensified from 435 according to UNICEF to more than 700 over the coming period.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported in a press release that approximately 19 million children in the Sudan were denied access to school if schools did not open this year.
It further states that 700 thousand children under the age of five suffer from severe acute malnutrition in the Sudan with high chances of increasing the chances of dying untreated, one of the world’s highest rates.
The NGO Save the Children reported last August that at least 498 children “probably hundreds more” died starving in the Sudan during four months of war.
UNICEF reported last September that one in two children in the Sudan needed humanitarian support, along with some 14 million children in urgent need of life-saving humanitarian assistance.
This year’s UNICEF humanitarian appeal was only 24 per cent funded.
