For every child, every right
This is how UNICEF is reaching hundred thousands of children and their families across Darfur, Kordofan and the Eastern States with support from the German Government through KfW Development bank
In Sudan, women and children continue to bear the brunt of conflict, emergencies, and hardship – this year, 15.6 million people will need humanitarian assistance of which 8.5 million (more than half) are children. Nearly 7 million children are out of school, and another 12 million struggle to learn due to insufficient learning spaces and supplies, teachers, and accessibility issues. Almost one third of the population are in urgent need of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services and the number of children who haven’t received a single dose of a life-saving vaccine has increased from 2019.
To ensure a bright future for the children of Sudan, UNICEF in close partnership with the German Financial Cooperation/KfW, delivers multi-year, integrated health, protection, education, and WASH services to create a safe and enabling environment for children to survive and thrive.
Bahita has received cash assistance twice; she used the money to provide nutritious meals for her family.
“I bought milk and ensured my children were well fed,” she says. “With the money, I was also able to buy for my children fresh fruits like oranges, grapefruits, vegetables – which I initially couldn’t afford because they are very expensive.”
In 2021, UNICEF launched the flagship multi-sectoral Mother and Child Cash Transfer Plus (MCCT+) programme, focusing on the first 1,000 days where foundations for optimum health and development across the lifespan are established. MCCT+ bundles cash transfers with access to social services to address underlying food, health and nutrition deprivations. To date, the programme has supported over 300,000 household members, safeguarding futures of the country’s most vulnerable children.
At Alnahda Health Centre in Nyala, South Darfur, Sudan, a health worker administers a vaccine to a child.
In 2022 alone, the German Cooperation/KfW funded interventions contributed to reaching thousands of children at scale with routine immunizations through health systems strengthening interventions.
In Aroma town, Kassala state, Sudan, a health worker holds a vial of the Polio vaccine at the Community Treatment Centre. For vaccines to be effective, they need to be kept at specific temperature. UNICEF is ensuring health facilities have functioning cold chain systems including refrigerators and vaccine carriers to keep vaccines safe whenever they are needed.
Women and children fill containers at a water point in the Taffari camp for internally displaced people (IDPs). The facility constructed with UNICEF support and funding from German Cooperation/KfW, serves both internally displaced persons and host communities as well as nearby schools, providing them with constant safe and clean water. With this funding, UNICEF has reached thousands of families with clean drinking water across Eastern Sudan, Kordofan and Darfur in the last year alone.
Khadija Musa washes her hands with soap and water after using the latrine in Gorora village, Agig locality.
Her community and 20 others, benefitted from a UNICEF-supported sanitation programme, that has ensured all households construct and use latrines, subsequently declaring them open defecation free.
The German Cooperation/KfW funded sanitation programme entailed establishment of health committees in every community that was followed by awareness creation drives on good sanitation practices in schools and communities. Children and young people were identified and trained as change agents within the communities.
“Many places around the city were used for defecation, which brought flies and caused many diseases, especially among children, that sometimes led to death. Even the water they drank was contaminated because people defecated close to water sources."
Thankfully this is no more in 20 localities in Agig and 22 others in Tokar,” said Muhammed Awahag Muhammed Musa, Bidaya Development Organization, the facilitator in the Comprehensive Sanitation Project in Community Leadership.
Dafallah Ali (10) and Ingaz Mohammed (10) are learning how to write the Arabic alphabet on solar-powered tablets in a UNICEF-supported e-learning center in Jabalain, White Nile state, Sudan.
Millions of children in Sudan remain out of school, missing their right to education. UNICEF is working with partners to keep children in school and providing alternative learning opportunities including e-learning benefiting out of school children in marginalized communities. Without these interventions, the learning loss in Sudan will become a generational catastrophe.
About 44,000 out-of-schoolchildren have access to e-Learning centers, which is mitigating compounded learning losses and improving access to learning for the hardest to reach.
