The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has evacuated more than 280 children and 70 caretakers from an orphanage in Sudan‘s capital, Khartoum.
Development Diaries reports that the evacuation was facilitated following a request from Sudan’s Ministry of Social Development in close coordination with the Ministry of Health.
The children, aged between one month and 15 years, were taken to Wad Madani, about 200 kilometres from the capital.
Nearly 1.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes since the conflict started and are now displaced inside and outside the country.
Since fighting started on 15 April, the ICRC has been closely cooperating with the Sudanese Red Crescent Society to deliver surgical supplies to hospitals, help collect and identify mortal remains, and improve access to clean water.
As a neutral intermediary, the ICRC obtained security guarantees from the parties to the conflict to ensure safe passage for the children and the orphanage staff.
‘Knowing these children are safe is an enormous relief’, the head of the ICRC delegation in Sudan, Jean-Christophe Sandoz said in a statement.
‘They spent incredibly difficult moments in an area where the conflict has been raging for the past six weeks without access to proper healthcare, an especially hard situation for children with special needs’.
Some of the evacuated children suffer from mental health conditions that could be exacerbated by the stressful conflict environment they were living in.
Photo source: ICRC Africa
