Sudan (MNN) — Three years of war in Sudan have left millions of children without protection, education, food, or other basic services. The consequences are likely to last a lifetime.
Often, the most vulnerable groups are also the most at-risk. While two out of every five Sudanese face crisis levels of hunger, more than 800,000 children younger than five years old face the deadliest form of malnutrition.
(Representative AI photo created with ChatGPT)
Furthermore, “Women and children are being specifically targeted,” John* of Greater Reach Alliance says.
“You look at all of the things we heard during the time of ISIS and the atrocities, and those are going on against women and children now in this war.”
Women and children from minority groups fare the worst.
“The war is driving people intentionally as far from humanitarian access as possible, because of the color of their skin. They want them dead,” John explains.
Sudan’s future is at risk, too. More than half of the displaced people are children, “and almost 27% of those are five and under,” John says.
“None of them have been in school, so we have a whole generation that [faces] loss every day.”
Hope amid hardship
Earlier this year, GRA and its partners held pop-up medical clinics that showed the Sudanese they were not forgotten. “People came and literally wept,” John says.
“They came with the children. They dropped to their knees. They said, ‘How could you come? No one has come.’”
Support Sudanese church planters here through Greater Reach Alliance. Pray that many people turn to Jesus after seeing His love in action.
“The enemy constantly works on creating loss, creating grief over loss, and fear of greater loss. And his goal is to drive people to believe that all is lost. God is attracting these people who believe all is lost to the light that is in a person who knows Jesus Christ,” John says.
“God is using the light in believers and the truth of the Gospel to bring these people to a place where they can find hope.”
*Pseudonym
Header image is a representative AI photo generated by ChatGPT.
