It’s International Day of Peace on September 21. We can think of nothing more essential on this important day than turning our attention to one of the most over-looked crises of 2023, the conflict in Sudan, and encouraging our readers to get involved.
Sudan has been plagued by decades of civil strife, resulting in immense human suffering and loss of life. By focusing our efforts on Sudan during this International Day of Peace, we can emphasize the urgent need for a resolution to this conflict and the importance of supporting organizations like UNICEF USA that are working tirelessly to save lives.
In a harrowing and deeply unsettling account, UNICEF USA shares their recent heroic efforts to save 297 vulnerable children from a facility located right on the front lines of intense fighting. This story underscores the crucial role they play in providing protection, health care and education to children and families in conflict-afflicted areas.
Their work not only saves lives but also offers hope for a better future for these children. It’s thanks to the brave efforts of UNICEF USA staff that these children can live to see a brighter tomorrow.
Mark this critical day by making a donation to UNICEF USA in your workplace giving campaign. Together, we can send a powerful message to the world that peace is not just a noble goal but a very real reality worth pursuing. The following article was originally written by UNICEF USA and published on their website. It is reposted and condensed with permission from the organization. The content of this story is heavy and depicts violent conflict, child neglect and death. Please read with care. To view the article in its entirety, click here.
For UNICEF’s team in Sudan, a triumph of humanity and kindness over conflict
For child protection specialists, the stakes could hardly have been clearer. Nearly 300 Sudanese children under age 4 — most of them babies — had been trapped for weeks on the front lines of intense fighting, stuck inside the sprawling three-story building in central Khartoum that housed Sudan’s largest orphanage.
After a month and a half of active conflict, messages from the nurses and volunteers who had remained behind to care for the kids were growing increasingly desperate.
The heat was sweltering, reaching as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Food and water were running out. And children were dying in increasing numbers.
UNICEF had set up temporary operational hubs in safer locations, out of the active conflict zone, to the east and southeast of the city. Narine Aslanyan, a UNICEF emergency manager who had just arrived from New York, huddled with colleagues and partners, helping to make final preparations for an ambitious rescue plan that had been weeks in the making. It had been a race against time, and now that time was running out.
“The situation was desperate,” Aslanyan recalls. “But evacuating 300 children from the middle of a war zone was no joke. Anybody who went to the orphanage had to risk their lives.”
The complex planning behind a UNICEF emergency response
Even before violence erupted in Khartoum on April 15, child protection specialists at UNICEF and other aid agencies were looking for ways to help the children at the Mygoma orphanage find long-term family care, the best and safest way for a child to survive and thrive.
Established in 1961, Mygoma received hundreds of babies a year, mostly from unwed mothers. In Sudanese culture, out-of-wedlock pregnancies carry an extreme stigma. Babies were left on the doorstep unattended and in very poor health, or sent directly from local hospitals. Conditions were cramped, with an average of about 25 children per room, and babies often lying two or three to a crib.
Conditions were dire at the orphanage even before fighting started
As with most institutional care, Mygoma was long plagued by staffing shortages, lack of funding and poor hygiene, the orphanage had seen its share of acute crises before. Many children died from preventable causes on an annual basis.
Now all lives were in danger. Most of the institution’s caretakers joined the more than 1.4 million people fleeing the fighting; only a handful of heroic holdouts remained. As heavy gunfire and shelling echoed through the surrounding neighborhood, staff moved babies away from the windows. When an explosion hit a neighboring building, they evacuated one of the rooms entirely.
Relocating the children to a place where urgent needs could be met
Taking the lead in negotiations with the Sudanese officials was UNICEF’s Child Protection Manager, Osman AbuFatima, a longtime expert on child welfare in Sudan, with deep understanding of the complexities involved and an abiding love of children. Finding a suitable transit facility to receive the children was no easy task. It would have to be big enough to house at least 400 people: the children, plus over 100 full-time staffers for their immediate care, and others such as social workers who would focus on finding safe and lasting family care.
Eventually, Osman AbuFatima found one in Madani, the capital of Jazira province, about 85 miles southeast of Khartoum. The four-hour drive from Khartoum, the UNICEF team decided, was far safer than the far longer journey to Port Sudan, which would have required desperately malnourished children to travel more than 620 miles over two and half a days, and for UNICEF to establish and staff multiple transit points along the way.
With a temporary transit site in Madani identified, UNICEF immediately set to work preparing the facility for the arriving children — adding toilets and showers and organizing rooms for children and nurses. Staffers brought in water, generators and backup generators. Interational Committee of the Red Cross worked on securing assurances of safe passage from the Sudanese Air Force, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.
Late on the afternoon of June 7, Aslanyan was in Madani standing with Osman AbuFatima, the Deputy Ministry of Social Affairs from Khartoum, the Minister of Social Affairs of Jazira province, and a wide array of others as five jumbo air-conditioned tourist buses pulled in. “You could see immediately that these children were not okay,” Aslanyan says.
An 85-mile bus ride, an emotional arrival
Standing outside in the baking evening heat, she recalls the scene the moment the doors opened and the first arrivals emerged. The nurses who had evacuated the children were emotional, openly weeping as they stepped off the bus, babies in their arms. But the condition of the children left the veteran aid worker and her colleagues speechless.
Osman AbuFatima, UNICEF’s child protection manager who had worked around the clock to prepare the rescue, would later recall that first day as “one of the most difficult days of my professional life.” The scale of the operation and vulnerability of children “was too much for anyone to handle.”
“When the babies arrived, saving their lives was imperative,” Mohamed Almugtba Khider, UNICEF’s health and nutrition officer would later recall. “Every moment counted. It is only with the efforts of all the medical teams and volunteers that we kept children alive overnight.”
For two days, medical teams worked nonstop
For the next two days, the medical teams worked nonstop, examining the children, identifying health issues and needs. Others from UNICEF helped ensure every child was documented — some of the new arrivals didn’t have birth certificates or names.
The work to get them properly documented continued for weeks. By the time the buses returned to take the children to their new temporary home two days later, the older children were up and running around, doing what children do — playing. The priority now is finding lasting family care.
There is plenty to be grateful for, Aslanyan says: “This is a moment of triumph of humanity and kindness over the devastation of conflict.”
