The traumatic effects of violence on Sudan’s children fleeing deadly conflict

Read the Full Transcript

• John Yang:

  The airstrikes and artillery fire intensified today and parts of Sudan were fighting enters its 11th week, at least 860 people have lost their lives, and more than half a million have fled the country. The conflict in this northeast African nation pits government forces against a rival paramilitary faction. Both sides have been accused of human rights violations. Ali Rogin has the latest on the traumatic effects of the violence on Sudan's children.

• Ali Rogin:

  As control of Sudan hangs in the balance so too do the lives and futures have more than 1 million children displaced by the violence. Many of these children have been displaced within the country itself. In addition to humanitarian assistance, many are seeking physical and psychological healing from the deep scars of war.

  Dr. Arif Noor is one of the people on the ground helping the children of Sudan through this crisis. He is the Sudan Country Director for Save the Children. Dr. Noor, thank you so much for joining us.

  You've been and your organization have been on the ground in Sudan for well before this fighting started. There's long been need for your services there. What has changed about the needs of children since this fighting began.

  Dr. Arif Noor, Country Director, Save the Children Sudan: Around 16 million people in the country were in need of humanitarian assistance. But since the conflict has broken out, this number has increased by 56 percent. And now almost half of the population of the country is in need of dire humanitarian assistance.

  And of these almost 25 million people, more than 12 million are children. They have been exposed to the sights, the sounds, and off the violence around them. So even if they are not directly seeing people hurt or killed, they are hearing stories of their friends, family members being killed being injured, and that has had serious consequences for their mental and psychosocial well-being. Many children have lost their lives, and many more have been displaced inside the country.

• Ali Rogin:

  What have you been hearing about what those journeys have been like for these children? And do they tend to be accompanied by adults? Are they largely arriving unaccompanied? What does that look like?

• Dr. Arif Noor:

  While the children move away from the conflict affected areas, they may be running away from the conflict. But that doesn't mean that they are still out of danger. For example, exploitation, abuse, and many times sexual abuse, especially of young girls, that has been going on at a scale, which has been unprecedented in Sudan.

  Many times they are received at concentration points which do not have access to nutritious food, access to clean drinking water access to proper sanitation facilities. These places are many times overcrowded. So that's the kind of situation that children are facing right now.

• Ali Rogin:

  Dr. Noor, I want to play you what one of your psychologists said.

  Maab Adelhalim, Psychologist, Save the Children (through translator): At bedtime when his mother asks him to sleep, he refuses and sits like that. He tells her you go to bed. I'm sitting here. The mother told me they didn't see anything, but they could hear the fighting noise.

• Ali Rogin:

  What sort of care are you able to provide to these children and what has the fallout been from their experience of these traumatic events.

• Dr. Arif Noor:

  I recently visited several of our feed locations where our teams are providing the support to children and their families. And we came across one child who just did not speak for the first couple of weeks, but later on by our teams started engaging with the child and gradually the child started speaking up.

  And now they are talking to their friends and to their caregivers. These are the kinds of trauma that children have to have had to go through and our teams that consistently work with them to make sure that they are able to reintegrate come back to a semblance of normal life. It is far from that because many children want to go back to their homes, so arrangements need to be made so that they can get back to their normal lives.

• Ali Rogin:

  There was recently a pledging conference in which wealthy nations pledged donations to help Sudan rebuild and the those numbers fell well short of what's projected as the total needed to rebuild the country following this violence.

  What more does the international community need to do? And is there a role that the Sudanese government itself needs to step up and provide?

• Dr. Arif Noor:

  Yeah, I think the international community needs to come together to assess the warring factions in the country to come to some sort of a settled situation where peace can return to the country. The biggest barrier for the time being is the ongoing violence, in addition to the bureaucratic impediments, which are there for the humanitarian community even before the conflict if those can be eased down a little bit, to make sure that the humanitarian community is able to reach to the people in need. All of these things can help make sure that we are able to reach out to these people swiftly and support them.

• Ali Rogin:

  Dr. Arif Noor, Sudan Country Director for the humanitarian group, Save the Children. Thank you so much for your time.

• Dr. Arif Noor:

  Thank you very much.