The war in Sudan started a year ago. Children are the most fragile survivors

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METCHE CAMP, Chad — The war in Sudan began a year ago. In a remote camp here, home to tens of thousands of people who have fled to neighboring Chad, Jubilee is close to famine.

Assadig Abubaker Salih is a 42-year-old mother of six. The family survived the hot, dusty journey from their home to a sprawling camp of windswept blue tents that stretched in rows toward the horizon.

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“We are in a very bad situation. We have suffered since we left the country. My husband died,” she said. “There is nothing here. We need supplies. We don't even have sugar.'

Back home, the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, is struggling to control vast resources, including the country's more than 45 million people, against a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Force, led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

According to the United Nations, about 9 million people have left their homes and more than one million have left the country. Thousands of people have died in the conflict in Gaza and Ukraine. The UN said it had requested $2.7 billion in funding to respond to humanitarian needs, but received $155 million, or 6 percent.

“Everyday Sudanese – often at great personal risk – have stepped up to support each other,” Eatizaz Yousif, country director of the International Rescue Committee, said in a joint statement by aid groups calling on the world to give more.

The UN has warned of an impending generational catastrophe. About 3 million Sudanese children are malnourished. About 19 million children do not go to school. A quarter of Sudan's hospitals are no longer functional.

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Aid organizations say women and children are bearing the brunt of the conflict.

Even after more than 570,000 Sudanese arrived last year, resources here across the border are thin. Helpers warn that supplies will run out within weeks. Lack of water and poor sanitation mean increased risk of disease.

The pediatric unit run by the charity Doctors Without Borders is seeing an increasing number of children suffering from lung disease due to poor environmental conditions. The organization has also documented an increase in fatal hepatitis E cases for pregnant women.

“Many of our babies are severely malnourished,” said Cordula Haffner, the coordinator of the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in the camp. “Because there is not enough hygiene, food, and water. This crisis will continue. We will see more such children.”

According to the UN, more than 16,000 children under the age of 5 who arrived in Chad from Sudan suffered from severe malnutrition – a period when the effects of famine are most evident.

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Many people in this camp have fled the worst fighting in the Darfur region in western Sudan. But the most desperate remained behind the front lines.

“We are seeing a disaster unfold in North Darfur, where our teams are killing 13 children every day in a camp for displaced people from malnutrition and related health conditions,” said Avril Benoit, US-based executive director of Doctors Without Borders. stated in the statement. He called on the Sudanese authorities to stop blocking aid.

Some Sudanese can get help in time. Rachid Yaya Mohammed, a mother of six, said she came to the hospital in this camp in Chad because she was six months pregnant.

Two small children – twins – slept next to him.

The situation is expected to worsen in the coming short season between harvests, when food supplies are depleted and rainfall increases malaria cases.

A year ago, Sudan was plunged into chaos when fighting broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and escalated.

Brutal attacks on ethnic African civilians by the Arab-dominated Rapid Support Forces in Darfur have rekindled memories of the genocide.

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Twenty years ago, government-backed Arab militias killed about 300,000 people and drove 2.7 million people from their homes. The paramilitary Rapid Support Force emerged from the so-called Janjaweed, a militia accused of mass killings, rape and other atrocities.

Now the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court say that there is reason to believe that both sides in the current conflict have committed war crimes.

West Darfur, especially its capital city of Genena, has witnessed some of the worst atrocities, including mass killings and widespread sexual violence against the African Masalit tribe, according to UN experts. According to the AP, the militia launched a wave of attacks on Genena and other towns, abducting men and burning their homes.

Associated Press writers Jessica Donati in Dakar, Senegal, and Sami Magdi in Cairo contributed to this report.

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