Sudan is facing the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with millions of children suffering amid escalating conflict, a top official with the UN children's charity said on Friday after returning from a visit to the war-torn country.
Unicef deputy director Ted Chaiban told reporters at the UN that the situation in the country is "alarming".
“The conflict is escalating, and children are paying the highest price,” he said.
The nearly three-year conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has pushed the nation to the brink of collapse, unravelling decades of fragile progress.
Mr Chaiban described scenes of women and children fleeing the siege of El Fasher through armed checkpoints, stripped of belongings and money, and left destitute. “I heard harrowing accounts of families who had gone hungry for days,” he said.
The fighting has killed at least 40,000 people, according to the World Health Organisation. About 30 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, including about 15 million children, making it the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Malnutrition rates are surging across the Darfur and Kordofan regions, Mr Chaiban warned, with 1.4 million children living in famine or at risk of famine.
The continuing fighting has isolated entire communities and impeded the delivery of life-saving aid.
UNHCR deputy high commissioner Kelly Clements told reporters that she had spoken with displaced families who had fled multiple times, like Fatima, who fled El Fasher with her family.
"She left behind her husband and son, who were killed. She and 18 members of her extended family walked for days without food before reaching safety,” Ms Clements said. “She finally felt safe when she arrived in Port Sudan.”
“The protection risks for women and girls in this conflict are as infuriating as they are heartbreaking," Ms Clements added. She condemned the use of rape as a weapon of war and the deep trauma caused by continuing human rights violations.
UN agencies on Thursday called in a joint appeal for “urgent international attention” to tackle the humanitarian crisis created by the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
“Over 900 days of brutal fighting, widespread violations of human rights, famine and the breakdown of life-sustaining services have pushed millions to the brink of survival, particularly women and children,” the International Organisation for Migration, the UN refugee agency UNHCR, Unicef and the World Food Programme said.
They said the situation in Darfur in the west and the central and southern region of Kordofan was “deeply concerning”.
In the city of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, more than 260,000 civilians have been trapped under siege for more than 16 months, cut off from food, water and health care.
“Thousands will die without urgent treatment,” Mr Chaiban said, adding that in North Darfur alone, 150,000 children are likely to suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year. In Tawila, cases have risen from hundreds to more than 2,000 a month since April.
Mr Chaiban said four out of every five are now out of school, while diseases such as cholera, diphtheria, malaria, and dengue are spreading as health systems collapse. At least 350 grave violations, including killings and mailings, were verified in North Darfur over six months, he added.
Funding shortfalls are further compounding the crisis, said the agencies. The 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan for Sudan has received only 25 per cent of the $4.2 billion required, “threatening the scale and continuity of emergency operations”, they warned.
“Without additional resources, humanitarian agencies will be forced to scale back life-saving interventions, putting millions of lives at risk,” the agencies said.
Representatives of the US, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt will meet the warring sides in Washington on Friday to push them towards a truce, a senior official familiar with the peace effort told AFP.
They aim to press “the warring parties to implement a three-month humanitarian truce”, the official said.
The four foreign powers − sometimes referred to as the Quad − are “acting collectively to apply unified pressure on the parties to stop the fighting and allow aid to reach civilians”, added the official.
Sudan's civil war began in April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese army, led by Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, and the RSF, which is headed by Gen Mohamed Dagalo.
In April, the UN said that more than 150,000 people had been killed and about 14 million displaced by the fighting.
