It’s hard to get aid to Sudanese civilians, but weapons flow towards them endlessly through each of the country’s neighbours. The destruction they wreak forces people to flee: 10,000 children are displaced each day. The suffering now will be matched by future pain. Girls as young as eight are being raped by fighters, Unicef has reported, and babies born of sexual violence are being abandoned.
Famine is intensifying and 25 million people are experiencing acute hunger, as the belligerents block aid deliveries: Tom Perriello, the US special envoy to Sudan, warned that they are using starving women and children as their arsenal. But the destruction in the country’s agricultural heartland bodes ill for what lies ahead. The last hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher, in Darfur, is under assault.
