The protection and well-being of children in Sudan are at a critical juncture. While children in the South are enjoying increased protection and access to services, those in Darfur and other areas continue to face shocking levels of violence and abuse. The international community must ensure that the protection of children is placed at the forefront of efforts to bring peace and stability to Sudan.

In its report, Sudan's Children at a Crossroads: An Urgent Need for Protection, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict documents dozens of persistent and pervasive violations against children by all armed forces and groups operating in the country and urges that immediate action be taken to protect these children. The report details these violations under six major categories identified by UN Security Council resolution 1612 (2005) on children and armed conflict: killing and maiming; rape and other forms of sexual violence; abduction; denial of humanitarian assistance; attacks on schools and hospitals; and recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups. In addition, Sudanese children face a spectrum of other abuses and obstacles to obtaining services and support, including forced displacement and trafficking for labour and sexual purposes.

Restrictive government policies and administrative procedures, coupled with chronic violence and insecurity, have hindered access to information from Darfur, the East and other volatile regions in Sudan. Organizations and experts on the ground find it increasingly difficult to share information, as they fear that reporting abuses will lead to retributive attacks against those they are assisting and humanitarian staff. Watchlist is concerned that these threats and attacks are part of the deliberate efforts by the Government of National Unity to prevent the collection and dissemination of verifiable information on violations against children.

Killing and maiming. While many areas in the South are experiencing improved security, extreme violence and fighting have escalated and continued to plague Darfur. Armed forces and groups have killed and maim children and youth, and humanitarian actors and other experts in the region have documented cases of shooting, mutilating and torturing children.

Rape and other forms of sexual violence. The prevalence of rape and other forms of sexual violence in Sudan is difficult to determine for a number of reasons, including the extensive fear and stigma that surrounds reporting, retributive action taken against women and girls who do report, customary and statutory laws that penalize survivors, and the limited access to services for survivors. Most experts believe, however, that the rates of sexual violence throughout Sudan are high. In Darfur, such incidents are often extremely brutal, perpetrated by armed forces and groups. Sexual violence is used by Arab militias operating in Darfur and among refugee populations in Chad as a tool to subjugate and humiliate non-Arab girls and women. Acts of sexual violence are often accompanied by racial epithets and other degrading comments.

Denial of access to humanitarian aid. Agencies operating in Darfur continue to face challenges in providing much-needed assistance and support to civilians. Widespread violence and insecurity in the region pose significant operational challenges for humanitarian agencies and threaten the security of civilians and humanitarian personnel. Armed forces and groups have repeatedly attacked aid agencies, looting their property, carjacking and confiscating vehicles, stealing and/or destroying humanitarian goods, harassing international and national staff and levying illegal taxes on humanitarian goods. These attacks have forced some agencies to withdraw from parts of Darfur or the region altogether, leaving hundreds of thousands of Sudanese children without access to life-saving support and assistance. Government policies have also prevented adequate and timely provision of humanitarian assistance.

Bureaucratic obstacles and complicated administrative procedures that restrict the movement of humanitarian workers have stymied aid operations in Darfur, the East and around Khartoum, limiting access to certain areas of Sudan and delaying the delivery of goods and services.

Attacks on schools and hospitals. Although attacks on schools have waned in the South, southern Sudan continues to have the lowest school enrolment rates in the world, with an estimated 25 per cent of primary school-age children enrolled in school. Similar attacks in other areas of the country have increased. Attacks by various armed forces and groups have forced schools to close and decreased education opportunities for children. The South also continues to lack an adequate health infrastructure and qualified personnel despite a relative decline in attacks on hospitals and health-care facilities, with only one doctor for every 100,000 persons and one primary health-care centre for every 79,000 persons. Attacks on hospitals, medical facilities and staff and humanitarian agencies are frequent in Darfur and have severely hampered access to health care; aid agencies estimate that only 40 to 50 percent of people in Darfur have access to health services.

Abductions. Armed forces and groups operating in Sudan and in border areas have abducted children to serve as combatants. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is estimated to have abducted over 16,000 children, including Sudanese refugees, while refugee children in Chad have been abducted by Chadian and Sudanese armed forces and groups. Many girls in Darfur are abducted during attacks on their villages and may be raped, often gang-raped multiple times; many are held in these conditions for a few days and then released, while others are held for months or even forced into long-term "marriages".

Children associated with armed forces and groups. Reports indicate that most armed forces and groups in Sudan, particularly the Janjaweed, Justice and Equality (JEM), South Sudan Unity Movement (SSUM), Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), recruit children to their ranks. While the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) continue to deny the presence of children within their units, its representatives have acknowledged that there are children in other armed forces and groups who have recently been incorporated into their forces. Recruitment of children, however, has declined in southern Sudan, although armed groups not party to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement initiated recruitment drives prior to their incorporation into the SPLA or the SAF to bolster their negotiating power. Sudanese militias have also recruited children and other civilians among refugee populations in Chad.

Other abuses. Sudanese girls have been trafficked within and out of Sudan to serve as commercial sexual workers or to work as domestic servants. Boys as young as 4 or 5 years old have been trafficked to Arab Gulf States to work as camel jockeys and beggars. Children and young people are further threatened by violence and insecurity due to the presence of landmines and explosive remnants of war and the widespread availability of small arms and light weapons throughout the country.

Sudan's Children at a Crossroads confirms that children in Sudan continue to endure some of the most inhumane treatment found anywhere in the world. Despite the end of the conflict in the South and recent signs of hope for a strengthened peacekeeping force in Darfur, many Sudanese children are not faring any better than they were four years ago when Watchlist published its first report on Sudan. The Governments of National Unity and of Southern Sudan need to take urgent measures to ensure that children and youth are protected. One important step would be to increase socially-oriented spending in Darfur and the South, utilizing oil revenue to support education and other social services for children and youth. Both governments must also ensure that policies to protect the security and rights of children are an integral part of all government institutions.

Other key recommendations to assist and support children in Sudan include:

• Authorities of the Government of National Unity immediately cease all attacks on civilians and halt all violations perpetrated by government armed forces and government-supported militias, police or other officials against the security and rights of Sudanese children and adolescents. They must provide humanitarian actors with unrestricted and secure access to all areas of Sudan, and guarantee all civilians safe, unimpeded and sustained access to humanitarian assistance, including emergency relief supplies, including ensuring that human rights defenders are protected and their efforts to bring to public attention information about human rights violations are supported.
  
  
• All Member States of the United Nations should use all available means to ensure that the Government of National Unity upholds its commitments and obligations outlined in relevant UN Security Council resolutions and international law.
  
  
• Authorities of the Government of Southern Sudan must ensure that communities receiving returnees are given adequate support to expand their capacity to provide social services and improve their overall absorptive capacity. They must ensure that all children, including refugees and internally displaced persons, have free and safe access to primary and secondary education in line with the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies.
  
  
• Members of the humanitarian community, including donors, should strengthen and expand programmes that protect and assist children in Sudan, particularly unaccompanied and separated children, out-of-school youth, girls and others who may face higher risks of violence, exploitation, abuse and neglect. This includes formal and non-formal education and vocational training initiatives for young people, which help prepare them for productive futures.
  
  
• The African Union Mision in Sudan (AMIS) must identify and implement ways to reduce risks of sexual violence facing women and girls in camps in Darfur and Chad by, for example, increasing the consistent presence of AMIS troops in and around camps, host communities and settlements, and increasing firewood collection patrols, ensuring that they are made on a regular basis and appropriately communicated to community members.
  
  
• Donor countries and agencies should increase and sustain human and financial resources to adequately protect children in all parts of Sudan.

(A majority of information in this article is extracted from Sudan's Children at a Crossroads report, available online at www.watchlist.org)