On April 15, 2025, Sudan entered its third year of war. The following snapshot uses information from USCRI’s April 2025 Sudan Situation Update, as well as information as of April 24, 2025.
Children in Sudan are bearing some of war’s deepest scars. Over 6.5 million children are displaced, and they have suffered two years of violence, trauma, and instability.
Sudan is the largest child displacement crisis in the world. A new analysis by Save the Children found that, on average, one child every ten seconds has been forced to flee their homes since the war began in 2023. On March 23, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that over 53 percent of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Sudan were children, and about 28 percent were female children who faced unique protection risks.
Children have come under attack and their bodies turned into battlegrounds. A shocking report compiled by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and gender-based violence service providers in Sudan revealed that hundreds of children were being raped and sexually assaulted by armed men. The scourge of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), including against children, has become a sickening hallmark of the war. UNICEF’s report analyzed 221 rape cases against children, recorded by providers since the start of 2024. Sixteen of the cases were children under the age of five. Four one-year-olds were the youngest survivors. These cases represent only a small fraction of actual figures.
Over 17 million children are out of school in Sudan. Attacks on schools and surrounding areas by warring parties, the transformation of schools into shelters for IDPs, and children being forcibly displaced have all kept millions of children from accessing education.
As warring parties continue to attack civilians, children are also being targeted. On April 12, UNICEF reported that at least 23 children had been killed in three days of attacks in North Darfur. The agency found that, in just three months, 140 children were killed or maimed in attacks in El Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur. Hundreds of thousands who survived the attacks were forced to flee on foot to neighboring towns. Save the Children staff in Tawila, where thousands fled, said that as people arrived, many “reported witnessing or experiencing horrific physical violence with some children separated from their parents in the chaos and now suffering from extreme mental trauma.”
Over 15 million children in Sudan need humanitarian aid—a number that has doubled since 2023. With famine confirmed in ten areas, children and their families are starving to death. A malnutrition crisis has had a particularly devastating impact on children. UNICEF predicts that up to 462,000 children could suffer severe acute malnutrition (SAM) between May and October 2025. Cuts to humanitarian aid by the United States have caused crippling funding lapses that severed the few lifelines that children had left.
USCRI, founded in 1911, is a non-governmental, not-for-profit international organization committed to working on behalf of refugees and immigrants and their transition to a dignified life.
For press inquiries, please contact: [email protected]
