Japanese Ambassador calls for an end to the suffering of children in Darfur

The Japanese Ambassador to Sudan has completed a three-day visit to North and West Darfur.

Ambassador Hideki Ito visited health clinics and outpatient therapeutic feeding centres at the Zamzam for the displaced in North Darfur. He also met with newly displaced at Tawila Gate, which is jointly supported by Unicef and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Unicef in Sudan reported in an information note today.

The Ambassador was accompanied by the director-general of the North Darfur Ministry of Health. Dr Ali Ismail, the country director of Relief International, Dr Wali Abdelsalam, and staff of Unicef.

The Japanese government supports interventions in nutrition, health, water, and sanitation and hygiene promotion.

“Japan has supported, through Unicef, the most vulnerable people in Darfur, the children, who are struggling for life to reach the age of five,” the Ambassador commented on his trip. “I am pleased to see how Unicef is trying to improve its effectiveness in delivering assistance. I could not help thinking about the future of the children I saw today.

“I am convinced more than ever that the human suffering of the displaced people must come to an end, by bringing peace and development in this region.”

Children’s emergency

Since the start of 2015, the needs of 50,605 people have been assessed and verified by aid organisations in Darfur, of which some sixty percent are estimated to be children, in what is increasingly becoming a children’s emergency.

Unicef Representative Geert Cappelaere repeated his concerns about the growing children’s emergency in the country. “Sudan is in urgent need of humanitarian aid to combat multiple emergencies,” he said. 

The situation is dire with thousands displaced, some 2,000,000 children under the age of five suffering from acute malnutrition of which 550,000 are severely acutely malnourished and at risk of death, coupled with multiple disease outbreaks in different parts of the country, including acute water diarrhoea and measles threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.

“Investing in children in Sudan remains an urgent imperative, as they increasingly continue to bear the brunt of protracted emergencies and chronic underdevelopment”, Cappelaere concluded.