By Ebi Kesiena
UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, has disclosed that 368,000 children have been forced from their homes in Sudan, and a further 82,000 have fled into neighboring states.
Also, it estimates 190 children were killed in the first 10 days of the war, and 1,700 injured.
According to UNICEF country director in Sudan, Mandeep O’Brien the conflict has caused nationwide closure of schools and educational institutions having a toll on children.
“Before the conflict, we already had 7 million children, between 6 and 18 years of age, of school-going age, out of school. We already had 611,000 kids under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition, with 3 million kids under five suffering overall from malnutrition
“Children are under enormous distress, as you can imagine, particularly in the hot spot locations of this conflict due to continuous bombardment and shooting. We have seen this and experienced this firsthand,” she said.
The latest reports show about half of the families arriving from Sudan into Chad have school-aged children. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees says 83% of these children had been attending schools in Sudan before they were forced to flee.
Also, in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where thousands of people have fled in the hope of evacuation, a group of artists has volunteered to organize recreational activities for children to alleviate the pressures on their mental health.
Rasha Mohamed Taher, the head of mental health division at the Sudanese health ministry in Red Sea State stated that “we have a number of cases for children who have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder who were transferred to the psychiatric hospital, we also have similar cases among adults.
“The thing that we can do now for children is to support them and alleviate the bad psychological impacts on them.”
