From what you are seeing, what does daily life look like for a child in Sudan right now?  

EH: Daily life for a child in Sudan has narrowed to a struggle for survival. Many children wake up in overcrowded displacement sites built from whatever materials families can gather – sheets of plastic, sticks, scraps of fabric. 

In places like Tawila, where hundreds of thousands have arrived after fleeing violence, children have lost the familiarity of home, routine, and safety. They are surrounded by hunger, disease, and uncertainty, with malnutrition and outbreaks such as cholera and measles spreading rapidly as health systems collapse.  

For millions of children, their education has been interrupted; classrooms have been destroyed and damaged. Some children haven’t held a book in years. Many others are separated from their families, arriving at displacement sites frightened and deeply distressed by what they have witnessed. Yet even amid these conditions, we also see children clinging to hope, attending temporary learning spaces or simply playing with whatever they can find. Those small moments remind us why we must keep pushing to reach them.  

You are currently in Sudan yourself. What are the biggest challenges you and your colleagues on the ground are facing at the moment?  

EH: The obstacles to reaching children here are immense. Every movement requires negotiations, security clearances, and long hours on rough roads where frontlines can shift with little warning. A journey to reach one community may take days, and even then, access can be denied at the last moment.  

Our teams work in an environment where basic services have nearly collapsed: fuel shortages, damaged hospitals and a lack of functioning infrastructure constantly slow down operations. Bureaucratic hurdles also delay the permits required to deliver lifesaving supplies across the country. And all of this unfolds under the shadow of escalating violence, which restricts humanitarian operations, disrupts supply chains, and puts both civilians and aid workers at risk. But despite these barriers, we keep delivering – truck by truck, convoy by convoy – because children cannot wait.  

For donors who choose to stand with UNICEF in Sudan, what difference does their support make for children and families?  

EH: Support for UNICEF in Sudan translates directly into children’s survival. Because of our partners and donors, we can vaccinate children against deadly diseases; provide clean water to communities that have none; treat children suffering from severe acute malnutrition; and create safe spaces where they can learn, play, and start recovering from trauma.  

The support also helps us restore dignity by reuniting separated children with relatives, providing psychosocial care, and ensuring that mothers have access to health services for their babies. In a crisis this large, every contribution strengthens our ability to reach children wherever they are, even in the most remote or insecure areas.  

Given everything you experience, is there something you’ve seen or heard recently that has stayed with you?  

EH: There are many moments that stay with me, but one that I keep returning to is meeting a teenage girl named Doha in Tawila during a recent mission to Darfur. She had fled with her aunt and siblings after violence engulfed her neighbourhood. Despite everything, she spoke about wanting to return to school and teach English one day. Her determination was a reminder of the light children still carry, even in the darkest situations.  

Another moment that I cannot forget is seeing women arrive at nutrition sites holding children who were severely malnourished and dehydrated. Their resilience, and the quiet strength of the relatives caring for them after losing so much, are things I think about often. These are not just statistics – they are children with personalities, dreams, and futures we cannot afford to lose.