World Refugee Day – Solidarity with the Children of Sudan and South Sudan

Statement by Joining Forces, East and Southern Africa Region

World Refugee Day – Solidarity with the Children of Sudan and South Sudan

20 June 2025

Refugee and migrant children in Sudan and South Sudan face a polycrisis marked by conflict, high cost of living, food insecurity, climate shocks, disease outbreaks and shrinking donor funds as we commemorate World Refugee Day. Sudan is the largest internal displacement crisis in the world, with nearly 13 million people internally displaced and seeking refuge in Chad, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Egypt and Ethiopia as refugees.  Children, especially girls and children with disabilities, bear the brunt, facing hunger, malnutrition, violence, disrupted education, and a lack of peace and security.

Children bear the brunt of suffering from hunger, malnutrition, and violence, missing out on crucial education and are exposed to high protection risks. South Sudan has seen a resurgence of conflict, which complicates the situation for returnees from Sudan trying to return to their homeland.

The global humanitarian funding crisis is leading to reductions in essential food and humanitarian aid as charities are forced to focus on the starving over the hungry. In recent research from World Vision, 97% families surveyed in South Sudan had had someone go a whole day and night without eating anything because there was not enough food in the past month. Children in families experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity were seven times more likely to irregularly attend school, five times more likely to experience increased violence at home, and six times more likely to be forced to marry[1]

Joining Forces East and Southern Africa stands in solidarity with the children of Sudan and South Sudan as we commemorate World Refugee Day. 

Let us highlight the plight of child refugees from Sudan living in Chad[2].  She embarked on a dangerous journey to Chad, highlighting the unique vulnerabilities faced by adolescent girls during displacement.

Ihssan a fifteen-year-old girl, has endured hardship most could not imagine after fleeing her conflict-ridden hometown of El Geneina in West Darfur. Now, a refugee in Chad, she explains why they had to leave. "Many people were killed, so we had to leave to avoid being killed."  For two harrowing days, Ihssan and her family fled, mostly at night, enduring hunger and fear, only to be attacked and stripped of their belongings. 

Her father, fearing the danger most men faced, could not escape with them and her mother disappeared after returning to Sudan to mourn a relative. Now living in a makeshift shelter provided by an aid organization in Mile Camp, Ihssan is forced to care for her siblings alone. For a year now, with little aid and no parents, she struggles daily to provide for them, forced to make difficult choices amid extreme poverty.

On this World Refugee Day and beyond, we, as Joining Forces East and Southern Africa, call on national governments, donors, civil society organisations and partners to take action to protect children through supporting and investing on:

• Education in emergencies: Ensure predictable, multi-year, and flexible funding to meet educational needs from the onset of a crisis, with targeted efforts to reach girls, especially adolescent girls, and increase access to vocational and non-formal education.
• Food and Nutrition: Ensure consistent and adequate food supplies to combat malnutrition among displaced populations
• Livelihoods: Organise regular digitalised saving groups for migrants and host communities, focusing on financial literacy, stable job creation and small business development, social integration and access to basic financial services.
• Climate change: Protect the environment and increase access to sustainable energy sources in areas that host refugees
• Agriculture: Promote climate-resilient productivity through climate-smart agriculture practices and natural resource management
• Localisation: Ensure transparency and accountability of national and local actors by strengthening their accounting systems, reporting mechanisms, and ensuring oversight by relevant government bodies.
• Durable solutions for refugees: Create conditions conducive to safe, dignified, and voluntary returns as well as support sustainable re-integration of refugees in their home societies by investing in peace-building processes that enable sustainable peace and security, mitigate, and manage insecurity, violence, and conflicts. Ensure safe, dignified, and voluntary returns, particularly for women and children, by addressing gender-specific needs and barriers.
• Cash: Deliver people-centric multi-purpose cash at scale (MPCA) and in a coordinated, adaptable, harmonised, efficient way for improved impact, addressing critical needs of refugees, vulnerable migrants, and host communities.
   

[1] World Vision (17 June 2025). Hunger, harm and hard choices. www.wvi.org/publication/world-refugee-day/report-ration-cuts-2025

[2] Sudan’s Displaced Children: Young Refugees flee to Chad, Many Without Families, World Vision International