Trapped, torn, but holding on

In Sudan, children are bearing the brunt of a war they did not start.

For more than 600 days, 12-year-old Maryam and her family were trapped in Al Fasher, North Darfur. Food was scarce — often there was none. Medicines ran out. Water was difficult to find.

“We tried to leave several times,” she recalls. “But each time, the fighting got worse. We had to stay.”

Together with other families, Maryam’s family prepared meals in a communal kitchen whenever food was available. It was there that her life changed forever.

“I heard a loud explosion from our shelter,” she says, her voice trembling.

“When I arrived, all I could see was rubble and bodies on the ground.”

Almost everyone in the kitchen had died. Those who survived were badly injured. Her father lay on the ground, bleeding, before he and the others were rushed to a nearby hospital.

Her mother had stepped out to a nearby shop earlier that day — and never returned. It has been more than a week since Maryam last saw her.

As the fighting grew closer, Maryam and the remaining families had no choice but to flee. Her questions about her mother went unanswered.

“All they said was that we had to leave,” she says quietly.

They walked for days — through villages, by night and day — facing exhaustion, hunger and fear before finally reaching Tawila, a small town that now shelters tens of thousands of people who fled Al Fasher during the recent escalation.

Today, Maryam shares a makeshift shelter with other displaced families. She waits — and hopes.

“I haven’t heard anything about her since,” she says.

“She didn’t have a phone, and neither do I. All I can do is wait.”

Every morning, she wakes up hoping that her mother will find her — that she will call her name, return to her side, and bring back the sense of safety she once knew. She also dreams that her father survived and will come for her.

In Tawila, the number of displaced people has more than doubled in recent weeks. In almost every shelter, there is a child like Maryam — children whose lives have been scarred by war. A generation growing up with fear and trauma, yet holding on to fragments of hope.

UNICEF and partners are on the ground in Tawila, Mellit, and Kutum, delivering life-saving support to children and families fleeing the violence — providing clean water, nutrition, healthcare, education, and psychosocial support to help them rebuild their lives and find strength amid loss.