At the time, aged just 16, she saw gunmen attack her village and kill people – among them her grandfather and uncle. Girls were raped or taken away.
“Nahed managed to escape but said it was terrifying,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell who described Nahed’s story Tuesday. “The frightening memories remain.”
Sudan is in the midst of the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis, since the conflict that erupted in 2023 between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, who now control North Darfur’s devastated capital, El Fasher, after more than 500 days of siege.
Ms Russell called on Tuesday for urgent action to protect children and essential services after visiting the country, where around 10 million people have been displaced, half of them children.
“Relentless violence”
During her visit to Kassala, in the east of the country, Ms. Russell met women and adolescent girls receiving psychosocial support and vocational training at a center supported by UNICEF.
Many have fled the violence and found care and safety at the center, but similar services are extremely limited in Darfur and Kordofan states due to ongoing insecurity.
“Sudanese children live in unrelenting violence, hunger and fear,” Russell said. “Women and girls are bearing the brunt of the crisis, including horrific levels of sexual violence..”
Briefing journalists from Sudan on Tuesday, the United Nations reproductive health agency (UNFPA), the country’s representative, Fabrizia Falcione, said she met survivors of El Fasher who had lost everything, including a 17-year-old girl and a 40-day-old child born from rape.
None of the women she spoke with had received a single antenatal care visit before giving birth.
“They told me they would rather not go to the hospital than risk their lives to get there..”
We need toilets and bread
When Ms. Falcione asked the displaced women what they needed most, they said toilets and bread. A way to earn a living comes in third place.
“No toilets near their tents, no lights in the camp at night,” Ms Falcione said. “And these are pregnant women without men in their household. »
In North Darfur, fighting in and around El Fasher has forced more than 106,000 people to flee since the end of Octoberoverwhelming reception sites and transforming areas like Tawila into vast informal settlements.
Among other assistance measures, UNFPA provides maternal care and psychosocial services to survivors of gender-based violence, while UNICEF identifies and registers unaccompanied children, restores access to clean water, and more.
Ms Russell said everywhere she went during her visit to Sudan, children told her the same thing.
“’All we want for Sudan is peace.’ The world must do better to realize this wish.
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First published in this link of The European Times.
