Sudan's Child Displacement Crisis: A Global Emergency Demands Immediate Action
Sudan is currently grappling with the largest child-displacement crisis in the world, yet it remains one of the most overlooked humanitarian emergencies. With five million children forced from their homes, seventeen million requiring humanitarian assistance, and nearly half of Sudan's children having lost between fifteen and eighteen months of schooling, the scale of suffering is staggering. As the United Kingdom prepares to co-host a global conference in Berlin to mark the third anniversary of the Sudan war, Moazzam Malik, CEO of Save the Children UK, has issued a stark warning: the world must pay more attention and act swiftly.
The Human Cost Behind the Statistics
These numbers are almost impossible to grasp, but behind them lie countless stories of unimaginable loss and trauma. Girls and boys across Sudan are living in constant fear, haunted by the horrors they have witnessed. For families, survival has become a daily challenge, with parents forced to make impossible choices simply to keep their children alive.
Take Farah*, a mother of four sheltering in a primary school outside Port Sudan. She fled the fighting in Khartoum with her children in late 2023, eight months after the conflict erupted. After weeks of displacement, her family found refuge in Hai Almatar, where a government primary school supported by Save the Children has become a shelter for displaced families. Nearly two years later, Farah and her children are still there, living in a small tent within the school compound.
"They still wake up from nightmares," she revealed. As a mother, Farah is doing everything she can to rebuild something resembling a normal childhood. Her children are studying again, making friends, and slowly beginning to feel safe. However, even this fragile sense of security may soon disappear, as local authorities plan to relocate displaced families to a new settlement. For Farah and her children, the thought of starting again in yet another unfamiliar place feels overwhelming.
A Collapse of Essential Services
Sudan is not merely facing a humanitarian emergency; it is witnessing the collapse of the services that keep children alive and help them thrive. Healthcare, education, protection, and basic safety have all been severely compromised. Many violations occur in areas beyond humanitarian reach, unseen and undocumented, meaning Sudan's children are suffering largely out of sight.
Despite catastrophic need, the international response has consistently been underfunded. In 2025, less than forty per cent of the required humanitarian funding was available. This is not a crisis the world has failed to notice; it is a crisis the world is choosing to ignore, with devastating consequences.
More than eighty per cent of Sudan's hospitals are no longer functioning. Those that remain open often lack even the most basic supplies. Children who could easily be treated for malnutrition or disease cannot access care. Families who have lost everything are pushed further into hunger, displacement, and despair. Children who should be safe and learning in school are instead left at risk and losing hope.
Stories of Trauma and Resilience
Another mother, who fled the siege of El Fasher, carried her disabled child on her back as the family escaped the fighting. Her seventeen-year-old son was not allowed through a checkpoint and was killed during the violence. Her fifteen-year-old witnessed horrors no child should see and is now so traumatised he can no longer speak. The family arrived at a displacement camp in River Nile state with almost nothing, after armed men stole most of their possessions during their arduous journey. Today, the five of them share a basic tent with a single bed.
Yet amid this devastation, something extraordinary is also happening. Across Sudan, communities are sustaining life through Emergency Response Rooms—informal, community-led initiatives rooted in Sudan's tradition of Nafeer, a call to collective action. These groups have become a lifeline, organising food distribution, medical assistance, and local support in neighbourhoods where markets have collapsed and public services have disappeared. They operate despite extraordinary risks, including targeted attacks. Save the Children is proud to support them, but community-led initiatives cannot carry a crisis of this magnitude alone.
The Urgent Need for UK Leadership
This is where UK leadership is critical. The UK will co-host a global conference on Sudan in Berlin in April, providing a vital opportunity to drive international action—both to end the conflict and to meet urgent humanitarian needs. Sudan's children cannot afford diplomatic paralysis. NGOs operating in Sudan warned about the risk of atrocities in places such as El Fasher, and the international community failed to act in time. The cost of delayed action is measured in lives lost, families shattered, and futures erased.
The UK must use every available diplomatic lever:
- Pushing for additional humanitarian funding
- Pressing for limits on the conduct of hostilities to protect children from grave violations
- Demanding accountability for crimes committed
- Galvanising international action towards a credible peace process
Save the Children has worked in Sudan for more than four decades, delivering healthcare, supporting schools, and protecting children despite an extraordinarily volatile context. With funding, they respond; with access and operating permissions negotiated by teams on the ground across all sides of the conflict, they deliver. However, humanitarian organisations cannot bridge a global gap in political will.
The international community must not wait for further atrocities before acting. Sudan's children need urgent protection now. Their futures depend on immediate and decisive action from global leaders.
* Farah's name has been changed to protect her identity.
