Child Alert on Sudan - by Carla Haddad Mardini shared by Niloufar Pourzand

Hearing Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Sudan's Representative, speak at the United Nations Palais last week was a sobering reminder of how history is repeating itself for children in Darfur. They are reaching a breaking point, hope must not.Twenty years ago, Darfur shocked the world and global outrage translated into action. Today, a new generation of children is caught in the same violence, the same hunger, the same fear, with far less attention and far less support.

The numbers are hard to absorb. Millions of children have been displaced. Many have witnessed violence and lost family members. Famine has been confirmed in Al Fasher. UNICEF’s humanitarian appeal for Sudan is only 16 per cent funded.

Nine-year-old Tuqaa is one of them. Displaced from Al Fasher, now living in a camp in Central Darfur. "All my friends are everywhere," she says. "I want the adults to stop this war."

 
As Sheldon said, children in Darfur do not need sympathy. They need the world to act.

We have just released a new Child Alert, the same kind of alert we first issued in 2005. We are raising the alarm again because the children of Darfur cannot raise it themselves. The response depends on all of us - governments, partners, and the private sector - choosing to act even when the crisis isn’t making the headlines.

Our teams are on the ground. What keeps them there is flexible, urgent funding, and right now, it is critically lacking. The children of Darfur cannot wait another twenty years for the world to notice.

Read the Child Alert here