From Perth to Manhattan to Sudan, this is the year that changed my life

This year changed my life. I haven’t felt that way about many, if any, of the 34 years I lived before this one. But I am certain what I experienced in 2024 will stay with me forever.

I work for UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, and until this year I was a largely desk-bound international civil servant at the organisation’s New York headquarters. I left my life in Perth to leap from journalism into the world of humanitarian assistance and I loved every second of it, but I had always imagined my boots being far dirtier than they got in Manhattan.

Ingram in October 2024, in a shelter in Beirut. Credit: Fouad Choufany

In 2024, I burnt through two pairs of Dr Martens. I completed two missions to the war in the Gaza Strip, one stint to the war in Lebanon, and now I write this from Sudan, where more children are on the run from the country’s brutal conflict than in any other place in the world.

It is impossible to compare these three conflicts except for one consistent fact – the children in each country are paying a very heavy price for violence not of their making. They are being killed, maimed, violated, recruited, displaced, abducted or denied the basic supplies they need to make it to tomorrow, and the day after.

Think of the baby whose entire body was severely burnt by a blast, the child survivor of sexual violence who is now grappling with the reality of caring for a child of their own, or the mother watching her daughter slowly fade away because humanitarian aid to their village has been denied and she has had nothing to feed her for weeks. These are the moments I won’t easily forget.

Change for these kids depends on all of us watching, listening and advocating for child rights to be upheld far more than we collectively are right now.

Take Sudan. Twenty months ago, heavy fighting erupted in the capital, Khartoum, and quickly spread throughout the country. There are now 25 million people in Sudan who need urgent humanitarian assistance. That’s basically the entire population of Australia in need of food, safe drinking water, health care, access to toilets, somewhere to shelter safely, or all of those at once.

As the conflict persists, crises have overlapped to create a lethal combination of displacement, grave violations against children and women, hunger and disease outbreaks.

Five million children have been forced to flee from their homes – again, nearly the total number of children in Australia – on the run, frightened for their lives or living in makeshift shelters, unsure of what tomorrow holds.

I met 15-year-old Muntaha who fled her city Sinja when the fighting descended on it. Soldiers entered her house demanding they take girls with them, but luckily her brother locked her and her two sisters inside a cupboard while the men searched every room. All their valuables were stolen, but the four siblings managed to escape. They spent nine days on foot, in the rain, crossing villages and rivers and eating just two dates each a day until they found a displacement site hundreds of kilometres away. After that terrifying ordeal, Muntaha said despite living in difficult conditions now she is grateful to be somewhere safe and back in school.

Others aren’t as lucky. More than 90 per cent of Sudan’s 19 million school-aged children are out of the classroom and at risk of never going back, making them vulnerable to atrocities such as sexual exploitation and trafficking – forever changing their futures.

Ingram in Lebanon, October 2024.

For months now, famine has gripped one displacement camp in Sudan’s west, meaning children there are almost certainly dying of hunger. Across Sudan, there are 13 other areas that are on the brink of famine and due to access constraints, humanitarian organisation such as UNICEF are struggling to get in and assist.

In wars such as the one in Sudan, their suffering is not seen, or worse, it is seen and ignored. The children in Sudan are among millions of children around the world who are living through silent emergencies, ones that rarely make the headlines, leaving them out of sight. Last year alone, UNICEF responded to 400 emergencies in more than 100 countries, but only a fraction of these made it into the spotlight.

The children I met in 2024 changed my life. And I hope you will help me change theirs. We can all do more to inform ourselves about the lives children in conflicts are forced to endure. We can listen to their stories. Hold their hands. And do whatever we can to speak up and advocate for their rights to be respected.

You can show your support at unicef.org.au/silent-emergencies.

Tess Ingram is a former WAtoday journalist and now communications manager for UNICEF Middle East and North Africa.