The number of children casualties highlights the need for urgent global action to address this escalating crisis, Save the Children warned on Monday.
New UN data shows at least 1,721 grave violations against 1,526 children in 2023 – actions that cause significant harm or threaten children’s well-being and rights – a spike from 306 recorded in 2022, a UN report said.
The cases documented in the UN’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict included over 480 children killed, 764 maimed, and over 200 recruited into the conflict. At least 114 girls were also raped or subject to sexual violence.
”This was the highest highest number recorded in the country since 2006, when the UN began systematically gathering information on the six grave violations committed against children in conflict” the UN said.
”While it is the responsibility of the UN to verify all reported grave violations, the ongoing violence and lack of access for monitors in Sudan mean that the numbers, while staggering, likely only represent a fraction of the true number of grave violations against children that have taken place in Sudan in the past year” the UN added.
Since the outbreak of conflict in Sudan in April 2023, children and their families have suffered increasing violence, hunger and displacement.
Earlier this year, Save the Children analysis with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) found that one in two children have been within five kilometres of the frontlines of the conflict within the last year, leaving them exposed to gunfire, shelling, airstrikes and other violence.
Meanwhile, over 4 million children have been forced to flee their homes and increasing food scarcity has left an estimated 5 million people, most of them children under five, acutely malnourished.
Dr. Arif Noor, Save the Children’s Country Director in Sudan said: “It is unconscionable that 1,721 crimes against children took place in Sudan last year – and with swathes of violations going unreported, we know this will just be the tip of the iceberg. The huge increase on previous years proves that conflict always devastates children’s lives, and must end immediately.
“As well as the killing and maiming of children, over 200 children have been forced into armed recruitment, and there have been horrific reports of mass executions and rape – including of children.
Dr Noor called on the international community to take urgent political action to address the conflict which ”demands more than just humanitarian aid – it demands a political solution”.
Noor added: ”Global leaders must do everything in their power to find solutions to end the fighting and work directly with the parties to the conflict to ensure they are adhering to their obligations under international law while parties to the conflict need to take all feasible precautions to prevent grave violations against children.”
The UN said the crisis in Sudan ”is truly a children’s crisis” and indicated that currently 14 million children out of a child population of 22 million need humanitarian support, 19 million children are out of school and 4 million children are displaced.
Despite the scale of need, Sudan’s humanitarian crisis is extremely under-resourced, with just 16% of its humanitarian plan funded half-way through the year, the UN said.
WN/as/APA