As Sudan War Nears 3-Year Mark, UNICEF Keeps Delivering for Children
Highlights
- Sudan remains mired in a brutal civil conflict; millions of people are displaced and facing severe food insecurity
- Amid widespread malnutrition and disease outbreaks, children and families remain in urgent need of humanitarian assistance
- UNICEF is working with partners to improve access to safe water, health care, nutrition and education support
- UNICEF safe spaces are giving children a chance to learn, play and heal
- More donor support is needed to help UNICEF scale the emergency response
Sudan remains mired in one of the worst humanitarian crises for children anywhere in the world. UNICEF is there, working with partners to improve child survival and protection and sustain essential services in the face of ongoing conflict and displacement. More donor support is needed to help scale the response.
Sudan's polycrisis of conflict, displacement, disease and hunger
April 15, 2026, marks three years since the onset of brutal civil war in Sudan. As conflict rages on, violence is displacing entire communities. Children and families fleeing for their lives face human rights violations and grave protection risks, including sexual violence.
At least 42,000 unaccompanied and separated children have been registered in Sudan and neighboring countries, according to UNHCR, the UN’s lead refugee agency.
Conflict-driven displacement and the breakdown of essential services have left 21 million people — half the population — facing high levels of food insecurity. Crop failures, water stress and livestock losses have made the situation worse.
Famine was confirmed in parts of Sudan in 2024, and hunger levels remain catastrophic — with children among the hardest hit, including hundreds of thousands at risk of severe wasting.
Learn more about the food crisis in Sudan and UNICEF's response
The nation's health system is at near total collapse, with 70 percent of facilities non-functional, leaving millions of children under age 5 at risk of cholera, malaria and other deadly yet preventable diseases.
UNICEF's integrated emergency response is centered on children's health, safety and future well-being
Despite insecurity and blocked supply routes that continue to restrict access and strain already overstretched services, UNICEF and partners are working around the clock to reach families with protection, safe water, health care and essential supplies.
UNICEF is the lead or co-lead in four critical sectors: water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), nutrition, education and child protection. More funding is needed to scale up the emergency response.
Ongoing efforts are aimed at mitigating famine risks; expanding access to essential primary health care, vaccination and disease outbreak control; restoring safe water and sanitation systems; and scaling up nutrition screening and treatment for children with severe wasting, among other lifesaving measures.
UNICEF is also supporting safe spaces where children can learn, play and heal and that help reduce gender-based violence risks for women and girls.
While reinforcing its field presence, UNICEF continues to build partnerships with women-led, community-based and private-sector organizations, expanding local capacities to ensure children can get the services and support they need to survive and thrive.
In 2025, UNICEF and partners delivered lifesaving assistance across all 18 states in 2025, sustaining critical services despite severe access and funding constraints. Health, nutrition, and WASH services were sustained at scale, including treatment for over 612,000 children with severe acute malnutrition, large‑scale outbreak response and access to safe drinking water for over 15 million people, helping prevent further loss of life. Through these efforts, UNICEF and partners helped interrupt cholera transmission, with zero cholera cases reported in Sudan in February 2026.
Emergency and outbreak response services reached 6.4 million people in hard‑to‑reach and conflict‑affected areas through 1,400 health facilities and mobile teams, maintaining essential care where systems had largely collapsed. Education, protection and psychosocial support were provided to 3.5 million children, supporting school re-openings and safe learning spaces, and mitigating the long‑term impacts of prolonged disruption.
Activities inside a sprawling displacement camp in Tawila, North Darfur — home to hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee fighting in Al Fasher and other conflict hot spots — illustrate the impacts of violent conflict on children and families, and what UNICEF is doing to protect the health, safety and future well-being of the most vulnerable.
Related: 5 Ways UNICEF is Supporting Sudan's Children
Uprooted children and families find protection, health care and hope through UNICEF's lifesaving support
Doha, 17, and her family fled Al Fasher in January as conflict escalated. Home had become too dangerous. Food was scarce, health facilities had been destroyed, and school — once the center of Doha’s days — was no more.
After a three-day journey by donkey cart, the family reached Tawila, exhausted and frightened.
Doha's story is all too familiar. Tawila has grown into a sprawling settlement sheltering some 600,000 people, most of them in makeshift homes of sticks, hay and plastic sheeting. Some families have lived in these harsh conditions for months.
As the camp population grows, so do the humanitarian needs.
Related: Life Begins on the Run in Sudan
"It felt like an entire city uprooted and rebuilt out of necessity and fear," UNICEF Chief of Advocacy and Communication Eva Hinds said after a recent visit. "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.”
At the reception point, families are registered, offered hot meals, provided with water containers and given medical check-ups before being guided deeper into the vast camp.
“Since we arrived, we have access to water and they always give us some food,” Doha says quietly.
To protect the health and well-being of camp inhabitants, UNICEF and partners are providing safe water, sanitation support and hygiene services to reduce the risks of cholera and other diseases. There is daily chlorination at public water points and support for handwashing and safe water handling.
To ensure sustainability, UNICEF trains local water technicians and community volunteers to operate, monitor and maintain water systems, including carrying out repairs when needed.
Families receive water purification tablets and safe storage containers to improve water quality and prevent contamination during drinking, cooking and washing, and dignity kits containing soap and menstrual hygiene items.
Learn more about UNICEF's safe water programs
Across the camp, UNICEF is also supporting the construction of emergency latrines, strategically located near shelters to reduce open defecation and ensure privacy, safety and dignity for vulnerable families.
UNICEF is also supporting immunization campaigns to avert the spread of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.
Nutrition care is another lifeline. At UNICEF-supported health facilities, mothers can enroll children suffering from malnutrition in a treatment program where they are provided with ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF).
Explore other ways UNICEF works around the world to support children's health and end child malnutrition
Providing education and learning opportunities goes hand-in-hand with mental and psychosocial support
The war in Sudan has created an unprecedented education crisis, with 10.8 million children in the country deprived of school and other safe learning opportunities. When children's education is disrupted, it not only jeopardizes their future potential, it also heightens protection risks.
UNICEF works with partners in Sudan to protect children’s right to learn and heal, by providing safe and inclusive temporary learning spaces that serve as protective environments for recovery and psychosocial support. Providing education and learning opportunities goes hand-in-hand with mental and psychosocial support, by helping children regain a sense of normalcy and continuity.
Read about the UNICEF-supported 'school that never sleeps' in Central Darfur
To help displaced and out-of-school young people like Doha get back to learning, UNICEF has supported the reopening of dozens of schools in Tawila alone. UNICEF has also set up 30 safe learning spaces and 25 accelerated program centers for children to take catch-up classes.
Education is closely tied to child protection efforts, by keeping kids engaged in safe environments.
Other child protection efforts include family tracing and unification services, and mine risk education.
Back to School in Sudan: Hope in a Backpack
Protecting women and girls in Sudan from gender-based violence
Escalations of conflict in Darfur and Kordofan amid the collapse of protective systems have increased the risk of gender-based violence, especially for women and girls.
UNICEF actions to counter rising GBV in Sudan include:
- establishing safe spaces for women and girls, such as the Jembia center in Kassala state, which provides a secure environment where women and girls can receive comprehensive support, including counseling; the center also works to raise awareness on gender-based violence — what it is, why it happens, how to prevent it and what steps to take if it does, including seeking medical care.
- supporting survivors of GBV with medical referrals, mental health services and psychosocial support, and training health workers in treating survivors of sexual violence
- deploying mobile teams to bring support services to women and girls in displacement sites and remote areas
- supporting community led efforts to change harmful practices including female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage
What children need most: an end to the conflict
UNICEF's efforts alongside partners are helping to keep children alive under the most difficult conditions — but they are not enough without sufficient funding and for as long as hostilities continue.
UNICEF continues to call for an immediate end to Sudan's conflict, and for all parties to protect civilians, stop attacking infrastructure and allow for sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access across the country.
Help UNICEF reach more children in need in Sudan and around the world
Parts of this article were adapted from stories previously published by UNICEF Sudan
Learn more: UNICEF's humanitarian action for children in Sudan 2026 country appeal
HOW TO HELP
There are many ways to make a difference
War, famine, poverty, natural disasters — threats to the world's children keep coming. But UNICEF won't stop working to keep children healthy and safe.
UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories — more places than any other children's organization. UNICEF has the world's largest humanitarian warehouse and, when disaster strikes, can get supplies almost anywhere within 72 hours. Constantly innovating, always advocating for a better world for children, UNICEF works to ensure that every child can grow up healthy, educated, protected and respected.
Would you like to help give all children the opportunity to reach their full potential? There are many ways to get involved.
