By Prudence Arobani
New York – The escalating conflict in South Sudan has driven more than one million children out of the country, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced on Monday.
Ms Leila Pakkala, the Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa of UNICEF, in a statement issued jointly with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), warned that the future of a generation was “on the brink”.
“The horrifying fact that nearly one in five children in South Sudan has been forced to flee their home illustrates how devastating this conflict has been for the country’s most vulnerable.
“Add this to the more than one million children who are also displaced within South Sudan, and the future of a generation is truly on the brink,” she warned.
Children make 62 per cent of more than 1.8 million refugees from South Sudan, according to the latest UN figures.
More than 75,000 refugee children in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have crossed South Sudan’s borders either unaccompanied or separated from their families.
“No refugee crisis today worries me more than South Sudan,” Valentin Tapsoba, the Africa Bureau Director of the (UNHCR), said.
“That refugee children are becoming the defining face of this emergency is incredibly troubling,” Tapsoba added.
South Sudan has the highest proportion of out-of-school children in the world at about 75 per cent.
The UN agencies worried that the trauma, physical upheaval, fear and stress experienced by so many children accounted for just part of toll the crisis was exacting.
“Children remain at risk of recruitment by armed forces and groups and, with traditional social structures damaged, they are also increasingly vulnerable to violence, sexual abuse and exploitation”.
UNICEF said its appeal of 181 million dollars for South Sudan and South Sudanese refugees in the region for the rest of the year was currently only 52 per cent funded.
Similarly, UNHCR’s funding appeal of 781.8 million for the country is only 11 per cent funded, the refugee agency said.