World Is 1,000 Days Late for Sudan’s Children as UNICEF Unveils Scaled, Data-Driven Lifelines Amid Worsening Crisis

Children continue to be killed and injured at alarming rates. Just this week, eight children were reportedly killed in an attack on Al Obeid in North Kordofan.

One thousand days into Sudan’s brutal conflict, children are paying the highest price—and the world is dangerously behind.

Since fighting erupted in April 2023, Sudan has spiralled into one of the largest and most devastating humanitarian emergencies on the planet. By 2026, an estimated 33.7 million people—nearly two-thirds of the population—will require urgent humanitarian assistance, half of them children. Widespread violations of international humanitarian law, coupled with extreme access constraints, have turned the crisis into a full-scale emergency for children’s survival.

Despite these obstacles, UNICEF and partners are deploying new, high-impact humanitarian approaches—leveraging real-time nutrition surveillance, mobile health and water systems, rapid-response child protection teams, and cross-border delivery innovations—to reach children in areas once considered inaccessible.

But innovation alone cannot keep pace with the scale of suffering.

Children under attack

Children continue to be killed and injured at alarming rates. Just this week, eight children were reportedly killed in an attack on Al Obeid in North Kordofan. More than 5 million children have been forced from their homes, the equivalent of 5,000 children displaced every single day, many multiple times as violence follows them.

Sexual violence is being used systematically as a weapon of war, with millions of children at risk. Survivors include children as young as one year old.

A hunger emergency accelerating faster than aid

An estimated 21 million people are expected to face acute food insecurity in 2026. Famine has already been confirmed in Al Fasher and Kadugli, with 20 additional areas across Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan at risk.

In North Darfur—the epicentre of Sudan’s malnutrition emergency—nearly 85,000 children with severe acute malnutrition were treated between January and November 2025, the equivalent of one child every six minutes. Collapsing health systems, unsafe water, and the breakdown of basic services are fuelling deadly disease outbreaks and placing 3.4 million children under five at imminent risk.

What’s new—and why it matters now

Against extraordinary insecurity, UNICEF’s response is evolving:

• Predictive nutrition and disease tracking to deploy treatment before children reach life-threatening stages

• Mobile and solar-powered water systems reaching displaced communities beyond fixed infrastructure

• Rapid child-protection and psychosocial care models integrated directly into displacement routes

• Cross-border and localized delivery partnerships that bypass bottlenecks and reach children faster

These approaches are saving lives—but only where access and funding exist.

A call to early adopters: act first, act fast

UNICEF is calling on governments, donors, development banks, philanthropic innovators, and private-sector partners to become early adopters of scaled, flexible, and access-enabling humanitarian action in Sudan.

This means:

• Front-loading funding for nutrition, health, water, and child protection

• Backing innovative access mechanisms and localized delivery models

• Using diplomatic leverage to secure safe, sustained, and unimpeded humanitarian access

• Demanding compliance with international humanitarian law and protection of civilians

Humanitarian action can keep children alive—but only peace can keep them safe.

The moral deadline has passed

Children in Sudan are not statistics. They are frightened, hungry, and displaced—but also determined, resilient, and still reaching for hope. Every day they wait is another day the world fails them.

Ending the conflict is no longer just urgent—it is a moral necessity.

The next 1,000 days cannot look like the last.