A Bleak Picture Painted for the Children of Darfur

The Watch list on Children and Armed Conflict just released their report entitled, Sudan's Children at a Crossroads. The report released on Wednesday said that the children in Darfur are enduring "unspeakable acts of violence and abuse" from killing and rape to abduction, torture and recruitment as fighters on the escalating four-year conflict in the Sudan's vast western region, the report said.

"The Children in the Sudan continue to endure some of the most inhumane treatment found anywhere in the world," Said Kathleen Hunt from the Watch list on Children and Armed Conflict.

Children in the South are enjoying increased protection and access to services, those in Darfur and other areas of the Sudan are enduring unspeakable acts of violence and abuse. Humanitarian Agencies have documented cases of armed groups shooting, mutilating and torturing children. The militias are also accused of abducting girls and gang raping them, and recruiting youngsters as combatants.

Sudanese girls have been trafficked within and out of the Sudan to serve as commercial sexual workers, while others are being trafficked to work as domestic servants. The Sudanese boys as young as four and five years old are being trafficked to the Arab Gulf countries, such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. There the young boys work as camel jockeys and beggars. These young boys also suffer from physical and sexual abuse.

It is estimated that during the start of the conflict that more than one million children have been raped, killed, wounded, displaced and traumatized. Most have endured the loss of their parents and family members. There is a mortality rate of 8-9 a day for children under the age of five years old. These children are being deliberately starved to death at an extremely rapid rate.

Life paints a bleak picture for some of the children still left in harms way and out of reach of aid workers. It is estimated that there are about one million children that are out of reach. These children will continue to endure starvation and disease as well as trying to survive the militias in day to day existence. Without access to those remote areas it is unknown how dire the situation is for those children.

Since the start of the Darfur conflict back in 2003 it is estimated that more than 400,000 people have died and more than two million people have been displaced and are now living in refugee camps.

On Wednesday President Bush made a stop at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial to address the crises in Darfur. Administration officials are wondering how far the president will go after a last-minute gambit by the Sudanese president that seemed designed, at least in part, to head off coercive U.S. action.

The Sudan, a far off place, too few care, and far too little.