Sudan's civil war has displaced 10 million citizens. Here are profiles of two young people from the most vulnerable groups: an unaccompanied minor caring for twin brothers, a woman who was raped.
Mahamat Djouma, 14, fled the war in Sudan without parents; his mother died in 2023 and his father subsequently disappeared. He came with 5-year-old twin brothers, whom he now cares for. Entesar, a 21-year-old student, also fled to escape the violence -- and was raped by three soldiers. She asked to be identified by her middle name since she has not yet told close family members about the attack.
"Nobody's looking out, really, for people who fall through the cracks of assistance because there are too many new people coming in," saysUnaccompanied minors like Mahamat and his brothers are one such population.Mahamat DJouma, 14, with two of his younger brothers at the soccer field where he likes to play.
"The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering," said Mohamed Chande Othman Before the civil war, Mahamat led a quiet, normal life in his village of Garadaya in Darfur in Western Sudan. He'd go to school, come home to eat dinner and then head back out to play with his friends.
"One of our neighbors and a friend of my father came and took me and my brothers and said we had to leave now or we would be killed," the teen recalls."The RSF were chasing us out of Sudan. So we ran and had to leave my grandmother behind.Traveling with one of their adult neighbors, the boys walked more than 10 hours to get to Chad. Mahamat, who's about 6 feet tall and very thin, says he carried one of his brothers on his back most of the way.
I interviewed Mahamat outside the small mud brick hut where he and his brothers live; he says his distant relatives at the camp gave it to him. It's a single room with a mat on the floor where the three of them sleep. There's no roof — just a plastic tarp."Our house leaks water so when it rains I have to find a place for me and my brothers to sleep," he says. His tone is serious and matter-of-fact.
Then there's the matter of water. Fetching water is Mahamat's least favorite chore. The nearest source — a stream in a valley — is a 30-minute walk away. Sometimes he can borrow a donkey from other refugees to make the trip but mostly has to carry the heavy jerrycan by himself. The water he gets from one trip lasts them only a day.
When Mahamat is not home to watch his brothers, they spend time in a section of the camp that aid groups like World Vision and UNICEF have turned into a play area for kids — there's even playground equipment. Other times, the twins hang out with other children near their hut. The laughter fades as he remembers playing in a soccer tournament at the refugee camp last year. He'd signed up to join this year as well but now he says he'll have to drop out.But over the four hours I spent with him, he did not complain. He just says:"I have no choice, I have no choice."Maqboula Ahmad Adam, a Sudanese refugee who volunteers with World Vision, says she checks in on Mahamat and his brothers a few times a week.
"I don't want to raise my brothers here in this environment, I just want to take them somewhere better and safer, somewhere they can go to school," Mahamat says."The problem is that if they grow up here they will be in the same situation as me, and I don't want them to be like me." "We have watermelon, pumpkin, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, lemons, okra," says the 21-year-old."We had a garden in our house in Sudan too, and my mother taught me how to grow plants."Entesar, a college student who was studying computer science before the war, stands in the kitchen in the tent where she is staying in Adre refugee camp.
She asks to be identified by her middle name because most of her family members — including her husband — don't know what happened to her as she fled. One of her cousins was pregnant and near her due date. She heard RSF soldiers tell her cousin that if she delivered a boy they would shoot him on the spot. A few days later, once Entesar and her cousins had recovered a bit from the beatings, they left their home city again. This time it was only women and children; most of the men in her family had been killed during their first attempt to leave, she says.
She says she and the many survivors like her need medical and psychological support. But international aid groups say they don't have the resources to respond to the overwhelming needs of Sudanese refugees across Chad.in Sudan, Entesar had undergone female genital mutilation when she was younger — which can bring physical pain during sex and particularly during sexual assault.
There is another layer to her pain. Since she and her husband hadn't lived together, Entesar was a virgin. She valued her virginity.
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