Sudanese war: Father’s battle to educate his children

Jaafar Abbakar has four kids who, like 19 million other children in Sudan, cannot attend school because of the brutal conflict that started six months ago.

Over 10,000 schools have shut down due to a war between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This war has caused a lot of damage in various parts of the country, including the capital city, Khartoum, and its neighboring city, Omdurman.

Mr Abbakar and his family are now living in a school because they had to leave their home due to the fighting.

But he says his children are not ready to go back even if schools reopen.

It is hard because of how our minds work. In such situations, someone can’t go to school. There is no clear indication that the war will stop.

Mr Abbakar left Umbada, a town near Omdurman, and moved to the eastern Gedaref state. He is trying to keep his children busy in their new house, hoping that they won’t have to stay there for too long.

I do my best to teach them as much as I can. We are trying our best to help, but there are limitations and our efforts are not enough in the long run.

“We attempt to study and review with them at home and refocus their attention on their school studies so that they can momentarily forget about the impact of the war. ”

For Eram, who is 15 years old, there is more than just school work that is important. She says she really misses her friends from school. She also mentioned that they haven’t talked to each other since they parted ways.

Unicef, which is an organization that helps children, says that almost seven million children were not able to go to school because they were very poor or their situation was not stable, even before the war started.

The fighting has caused around 6. 5 million more children to leave their schools, and an additional 5 million children have been impacted by the closure of schools.

Unicef and other groups that aren’t part of the government are helping with things like online learning platforms. However, they’re saying that these platforms shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for regular school. They think the government needs to open schools as soon as they can.