Generation War: Children in Sudan Today

A refugee mother from Darfur in Sudan holds her son during his medical exam, at the hospital set up by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the refugee camp of Metche, eastern Chad, 05 April 2024. EPA/STRINGER
A refugee mother from Darfur in Sudan holds her son during his medical exam, at the hospital set up by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the refugee camp of Metche, eastern Chad, 05 April 2024. EPA/STRINGER
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Generation War: Children in Sudan Today

A refugee mother from Darfur in Sudan holds her son during his medical exam, at the hospital set up by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the refugee camp of Metche, eastern Chad, 05 April 2024. EPA/STRINGER
A refugee mother from Darfur in Sudan holds her son during his medical exam, at the hospital set up by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the refugee camp of Metche, eastern Chad, 05 April 2024. EPA/STRINGER

Amna Ishaq can no longer feed her children "more than once a day and sometimes not at all" after nearly a year of devastating war in Sudan.
"We are all sick, along with our children. We have nothing to eat and the water we find is polluted," Ishaq told AFP at a camp for the displaced in Darfur.
The vast western region is no stranger to war, suffering devastation in a deadly conflict that began in 2003 and which also sparked a hunger crisis.
With war returning to Sudan last April, the United Nations has warned that "an entire generation could be destroyed".
The world body says millions of displaced children are starving, have been forced into marriage or become child soldiers and threatened with death.
The fighting broke out on April 15, 2023 between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's army and Mohammed Hamdan Daglo's Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Looting, fighting, air strikes and roads cut by warring factions have isolated every region of Sudan, a northeast African country more than three times the size of France.
The UN says it has been able to reach only 10 percent of Sudan's 48 million people, with the country on the brink of famine.
At Otach, a displacement camp set up two decades ago in South Darfur where Ishaq has taken refuge with her family, rations of maize porridge no longer arrive.
About "222,000 children could die of starvation within a few weeks or months" and "more than 700,000 this year", according to the UN.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that at least one child dies every two hours at North Darfur's Zamzam displacement camp alone.
And at Kalma camp in South Darfur, the aid group Alight said that "more than two children are dying every 12 hours".
Children have been sold
Medical journal The Lancet has reported that the small Al-Buluk pediatric hospital in the capital Khartoum admits "about 25 children for severe acute malnutrition. Each week, two or three of them die."
Overall, nearly three million children are suffering from malnutrition and 19 million are no longer in school, according to Save the Children, endangering the future of a nation where 42 percent of the population is under 14 years old.
Even before this war, nearly half of Sudan's children had severely reduced growth and 70 percent were unable to read and understand a simple sentence, the charity says.
Adam Regal, spokesman for independent Sudanese aid group General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced Persons in Darfur, said he has seen dozens of children die.
He blamed "the stubbornness" of the warring parties, telling AFP that "food and humanitarian aid no longer arrive" because of a lack of access.
A Khartoum factory that produced nutritional supplements for children has been destroyed by bombing and vaccine factories for newborns have been looted.
Cholera, measles and malaria prevail in eastern parts of the country.
Adding to the health crisis are the horrors of war.
More and more Sudanese organizations are warning that to feed their children parents are resorting to "selling" some of them.
One local charity reported that a father sold his 15-year-old daughter for a few bags of grain at a market.
The UN has also recorded child marriages in response to "family separations" -- mothers or fathers who have lost their spouses or children while fleeing violence in panic -- or because of "gender-based and sexual violence including rape and unwanted pregnancies".
Rape and child soldiers
The UN said young girls and women have been the victims of "abductions, forced marriages, and sexual violence related to the conflict in Darfur and in the state of Al-Jazira" south of Khartoum, where many displaced people are.
The dangers facing boys are different: both the army and the paramilitaries, but also tribal and ethnic militias, "recruit and use children in Darfur, Kordofan, Khartoum, and in the east of the country", the experts said.
Some parties even force "children from a neighboring country to actively participate in hostilities", they added.
Since the early days of the war, videos uploaded by soldiers and paramilitaries regularly show teenagers on military pickup trucks or with automatic rifles in hand.
It's the "catastrophe of a generation", UN officials said.



Harris Tries to Thread the Needle on Gaza After Meeting with Netanyahu 

US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds, in Washington, DC, US, July 25, 2024. (Reuters)
US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds, in Washington, DC, US, July 25, 2024. (Reuters)
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Harris Tries to Thread the Needle on Gaza After Meeting with Netanyahu 

US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds, in Washington, DC, US, July 25, 2024. (Reuters)
US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds, in Washington, DC, US, July 25, 2024. (Reuters)

Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic nominee for president, is attempting to bridge divides within the party over the war in Gaza, emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself while also focusing on alleviating Palestinian suffering.

She delivered remarks after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that reflected a delicate balancing act on one of the country's most divisive political issues. Some Democrats have been critical of President Joe Biden's steadfast support for Israel despite the increasing death toll among Palestinians, and Harris is trying to unite her party for the election battle with Republican candidate Donald Trump.

"We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies," she said. "We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent."

Harris did not deviate from the administration's approach to the conflict, including grueling negotiations aimed at ending the fighting, releasing hostages held by Hamas and eventually rebuilding Gaza. She also said nothing about military assistance for Israel, which some Democrats want to cut.

Instead, she tried to refocus the conversation around mitigating the calamity in Gaza, and she used language intended to nudge Americans toward an elusive middle ground.

"The war in Gaza is not a binary issue," she said. "But too often, the conversation is binary when the reality is anything but."

In addition, Harris made a more explicit appeal to voters who have been frustrated by the ceaseless bloodshed, which began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

"To everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire, and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you, and I hear you," she said.

Harris' meeting with Netanyahu was private, and she described it as "frank and constructive." She also emphasized her longtime support for Israel, which includes raising money to plant trees in the country when she was a young girl.

Jewish Americans traditionally lean Democratic, but Republicans have tried to make inroads. Trump claimed this week that Harris "is totally against the Jewish people" because she didn't attend Netanyahu's address to a joint meeting of Congress. The vice president was traveling in Indiana during the speech.

Harris is married to a Jewish man, Doug Emhoff, who has played an outspoken role in the administration's efforts to combat antisemitism.

Netanyahu did not speak publicly after his meeting with Harris. His trip was scheduled before Biden dropped his reelection bid, but the meeting with Harris was watched closely for clues to her views on Israel.

"She is in a tricky situation and walking a tightrope where she’s still the vice president and the president really is the one who leads on the foreign policy agenda," said Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a Democrat whose city is home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the nation. "But as the candidate, the presumptive nominee, she has to now create the space to differentiate in order for her to chart a new course."

Protesters gathered outside Union Station on the day of Netanyahu's speech, ripping down American flags and spray painting "Hamas is coming."

Harris sharply criticized those actions, saying there were "despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric. "

"I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation," she said in a statement.

As vice president, Harris has tried to show little daylight between herself and Biden. But David Rothkopf, a foreign policy writer who has met with her, said there's been "a noticeable difference in tone, particularly in regards to concern for the plight of innocent Palestinians."

The difference was on display in Selma, Alabama, in March, when Harris commemorated the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march for voting rights in 1965.

During her speech, Harris said that "given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire."

The audience broke out in applause. A few sentences later, Harris emphasized that it was up to Hamas to accept the deal that had been offered. But her demand for a ceasefire still resonated in ways that Biden's comments had not.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in June found that about 6 in 10 Democrats disapproved of the way Biden is handling the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Roughly the same number said Israel's military response in Gaza had gone too far.

Israeli analysts said they doubted that Harris would present a dramatic shift in policies toward their country.

Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser and senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank, said Harris was from a generation of American politicians who felt they could both support Israel and publicly criticize its policies.

"The question is as president, what would she do?" Freilich said. "I think she would put considerably more pressure on Israel on the Palestinian issue overall."