After 500 days of relentless siege, the Sudanese city of El Fasher has become the epicenter of a humanitarian catastrophe, with children bearing the brunt of violence, hunger, and disease. According to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the city—once a bustling capital of North Darfur—now stands as a stark symbol of suffering, as malnutrition, disease, and violence claim young lives daily.
UNICEF’s latest reports, released on August 27, 2025, paint a harrowing picture. The agency’s Executive Director, Catherine Russell, didn’t mince words, declaring, “We are witnessing a devastating tragedy – children in El Fasher are starving while UNICEF’s lifesaving nutrition services are being blocked.” She further emphasized, “Blocking humanitarian access is a grave violation of children’s rights, and the lives of children are hanging in the balance. UNICEF continues to call for immediate and full access, including through expanded pauses in the fighting to allow us to reach all children in need. Children must be protected at all times, and they must have access to life-saving aid.”
El Fasher’s ordeal began in earnest in April 2024, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) imposed a siege on the city, cutting off supply lines and aid deliveries. Since then, the city has been isolated for over 16 months, with devastating consequences. More than 600,000 people—half of them children—have fled El Fasher and its surrounding camps in recent months, according to UNICEF. Yet, an estimated 260,000 civilians, including 130,000 children, remain trapped inside, unable to escape the dire conditions.
The toll on children is nothing short of catastrophic. More than 1,100 grave violations have been verified in El Fasher since the siege began, including the killing and maiming of over 1,000 children. Many of these children were struck down in their homes, inside displacement camps, or even in marketplaces. At least 23 children have been subjected to rape, gang rape, or sexual abuse, while others have been abducted, recruited, or used by armed groups. UNICEF warns that the actual number of affected children is almost certainly much higher, given the limited access and verification challenges on the ground.
Recent violence has added to the misery. Just this week, reports emerged of another mass casualty event: seven children were reportedly killed in an attack on Abu Shouk Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, located on the outskirts of El Fasher. The city’s health and education infrastructure has also been devastated—35 hospitals and 6 schools have been struck, including the El Fasher Saudi Maternal Teaching Hospital, which was hit more than ten times. In January, shelling destroyed the therapeutic health center at Abu Shouk camp, depriving thousands of malnourished children of critical treatment.
Malnutrition has reached emergency levels. Since January 2025, more than 10,000 children in El Fasher have been treated for Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), nearly double the previous year’s figure. However, with supply lines completely severed, health facilities and mobile nutrition teams have been forced to suspend services as their stocks are depleted. This has left an estimated 6,000 children with SAM without any treatment. “About 6,000 children face an exponentially higher risk of death,” UNICEF stated, as quoted by The National. Without therapeutic food and medical care, these children’s chances of survival diminish with each passing day.
The situation outside El Fasher is equally grim. Mellit locality, which has absorbed many of El Fasher’s displaced, recorded an Acute Malnutrition rate of 34.2% in July 2025—a record high since the onset of the war in April 2023. The siege’s effects are compounded by Sudan’s worst cholera outbreak in decades. Since July 2024, more than 96,000 suspected cases and 2,400 deaths have been reported nationwide, with nearly 5,000 cases and 98 deaths in Darfur alone. Children weakened by hunger in overcrowded camps around Tawila, Zamzam, and El Fasher are now highly vulnerable to deadly waterborne diseases.
In the face of this crisis, UNICEF has amplified its calls for urgent action. The agency is demanding an immediate and sustained humanitarian pause in El Fasher and other conflict-affected areas, unimpeded access for the delivery of therapeutic food, medicines, clean water, and other essentials, and the re-establishment of UN and partner operations in the most critically affected regions. The protection of civilians—including children—and civilian infrastructure, in accordance with international humanitarian law, remains a top priority for UNICEF and its partners.
UNICEF’s new reports, Life begins on the run and Trapped by war and hunger, offer a personal glimpse into the suffering. The first chronicles a mother’s journey as she flees El Fasher for Tawila, shortly after giving birth—her story emblematic of the countless women forced to make impossible choices to keep their children alive. The second report details the daily struggles of mothers in El Fasher, highlighting the extraordinary lengths they go to in order to find food, water, and safety for their families.
The international community has not remained silent. A coalition of peace brokers—including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the US, and Switzerland—recently called on both sides in Sudan’s conflict to ease the worsening humanitarian crisis. Their seven-point appeal includes keeping key routes open for aid convoys, ensuring safe passage for civilians seeking assistance, and guaranteeing that aid workers will not face retaliation for delivering help in rival-held areas. They also urge combatants to protect critical civilian infrastructure, a demand that echoes UNICEF’s own.
The backdrop to this crisis is Sudan’s ongoing civil war, which erupted in April 2023. In recent months, the country has become divided between two rival governments after the RSF established its own administration in the territories it controls. The conflict has led to the displacement of millions and the collapse of basic services across vast swathes of the country.
For those still trapped in El Fasher, the situation grows more desperate by the day. At least 63 people—mostly women and children—died of malnutrition in a single week recently, according to UNICEF. The agency warns that, without immediate action to restore access and supplies, the death toll will only rise. “Malnutrition, disease and violence are claiming young lives every day,” UNICEF said in its statement. El Fasher, once a place of hope and community, is now an “epicentre of child suffering.”
As Sudan’s war grinds on and the world’s attention shifts elsewhere, the children of El Fasher remain in the crosshairs—starving, sick, and all too often forgotten. The pleas from aid agencies, mothers, and peace brokers alike are clear: without swift and sustained humanitarian access, an entire generation risks being lost to hunger, disease, and violence.
With every day that passes, the urgency grows. The fate of El Fasher’s children hangs in the balance, their future dependent on whether the world can look past the headlines and act before it’s too late.