Desperate Choices: The Heartbreaking Impact of Sudan's Civil War on Families

Thu Oct 16 2025 16:26:50 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

In the wake of Sudan's ongoing civil conflict, mothers like Touma face unimaginable decisions about the survival of their children amid escalating malnutrition.

As Sudan continues to grapple with a devastating civil war, families are stranded in desperate situations, facing impossible choices regarding healthcare and survival. With hospitals overwhelmed and resources scarce, parents like Touma are torn between the lives of their children—a tragedy underscored by the heartbreaking testimony of mothers struggling to provide even the most basic care. Amid the destruction, the innocence of childhood has vanished, replaced by the painful realities of war, malnutrition, and loss.

Warning: This piece contains details that some readers may find distressing

Touma hasn't eaten in days. She sits silently, her eyes glassy as she stares aimlessly across the hospital ward.

In her arms, motionless and severely malnourished, lies her three-year-old daughter, Masajed.

Touma seems numb to the cries of the other young children around her. I wish she would cry, the 25-year-old mother tells us, looking at her daughter. She hasn't cried in days.\

Bashaer Hospital is one of the last functioning hospitals in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, devastated by the civil war which has been raging since April 2023. Many have traveled hours to get here for specialist care.

The malnutrition ward is filled with children who are too weak to fight disease, their mothers by their bedside, helpless.

Sudan is currently experiencing one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies.

According to the UN, three million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. The hospitals that are left are overwhelmed.

However, the lifesaving medicines needed by the children in the malnutrition ward must be paid for by their families.

Masajed is a twin; she and her sister Manahil were brought to the hospital together. But the family could only afford antibiotics for one child.

Touma had to make the impossible choice – she chose Manahil.

I wish they could both recover and grow, her grief-stricken voice cracks, and that I could watch them walking and playing together as they did before.

Survival rates here are low. For the families on this ward, the war has taken everything. They have been left with nothing and no means to buy the medicines that would save their children.

As we leave, the doctor says none of the children in this ward will survive.

Across the whole of Khartoum, children's lives have been rewritten by the civil war.

The destruction of schools has put the future of children in even more jeopardy. Millions are no longer being educated.

Yet, amid despair, Sudan's children cling to fleeting moments of joy, trying to reclaim their lost childhoods.