Child recruitment in Sudan is no longer an isolated rights violation; it has become a systematic phenomenon and one of the most tragic faces of the civil war. What is unfolding today in the camps of the Sudanese army and allied militias—including extremist Islamist battalions—goes beyond military necessity, reviving a dark history that began with the “Popular Defense Forces” under al-Bashir, but now in harsher and more organized forms.
The scene is nothing less than a collective theft of childhood: school-age children pulled from classrooms and thrust into battlefields, some drowning in uniforms far too large for their bodies, others clutching rifles taller than themselves. Behind this grotesque picture lies a tangled mix of hunger, poverty, hardline religious rhetoric, and tribal and social pressures.
Hunger has become the most prevalent currency of recruitment. International reports document families forced to hand over their children in exchange for food rations or promises of protection. Today, a Sudanese child is no longer dragged to war in chains, but by a subtler coercion: a loaf of bread or a sack of flour can cost an entire life. This is not merely coercion; it is a form of systematic extortion that weaponizes human need.
Alongside hunger is the religious rhetoric broadcast from the pulpits of Islamist brigades like “al-Bara ibn Malik,” promising children “paradise” if they take up arms, while branding any refusal as weakness of faith. Thus religion is turned into a tool of justification for recruitment, and the concept of jihad is reduced to internal fighting among citizens of one nation, a conflict driven less by creed than by political and regional ambitions.
Tribal affiliation adds yet another layer of pressure. Many families are trapped by fear of stigma or accusations of betrayal if they do not offer their sons as “fuel” for war. These social codes create a new layer of coercion, making the refusal of recruitment a costly choice that exposes families to isolation or even retaliation.
The direct outcome is stark: an entire generation robbed of its childhood. UNICEF reports confirm that more than 19 million Sudanese children are out of school, with 90% of schools closed due to war. Child recruits are not merely temporary fighters, but long-term victims, facing physical disabilities, psychological trauma, and social collapse that threatens what remains of Sudan’s fragile fabric.
This is not merely a breach of international law, although that alone would be enough to indict the army and its allies. It is a compound crime: a war crime against children, a crime against the future, and a crime against the very idea of Sudan itself. When guns become more valuable than books, and militias more powerful than schools, the true target is not only children, but the entire project of the state.
The danger is compounded by the absence of accountability. No domestic mechanisms exist to halt recruitment, nor is there political will to protect children. Meanwhile, the international community limits itself to statements of concern, as the war continues to swallow an entire generation. Even when solutions are proposed, they rarely extend beyond emergency humanitarian aid, without addressing the deeper military and tribal structures that perpetuate these practices.
What is needed today is not only to stop recruitment, but to rebuild a system that protects childhood in Sudan. That means imposing sanctions on complicit leaders, supporting disarmament and reintegration programs for children, and providing families with real economic alternatives so they are not forced to choose between hunger and sending their children to war.
If this trajectory is not broken, Sudan will face a generation that has known nothing but the language of weapons. And the question then will no longer be:
How do we return children to their schools? but rather: How do we restore humanity to a nation where an entire generation has grown up with blood as a daily reality?
