For the past 10 months, thousands of people have fled Sudan's civil war to Lenk, a town just across the border from South Sudan.
At least 541,888 people have arrived since April 2023. The UN agency registered 71,757 new arrivals in December, the highest number in any month last year.
Approximately 18 percent of these are Sudanese and 81 percent are South Sudanese. The latter is believed to have left South Sudan during the country's civil war from 2013 to 2020. He was forced to return because of the war in Sudan between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese military.
Lenk's situation is dire. Due to the high number of daily arrivals, refugee camps and gatherings are extremely crowded. Initially prepared to accommodate 4,000 people, the transit center now accommodates more than 23,000 people.
Sanitation facilities are woefully inadequate, with 200 people sharing one toilet. Cases of cholera, measles, and severe malnutrition are on the rise.
Aid organizations are struggling to meet the desperate needs of exhausted and traumatized families who have been walking for days with little food or water. Once they arrive at the transit center, there is little food and clean water available to them. More shelter, medicine and basic supplies are desperately needed.
Nyasevit, 13, left Khartoum when the fighting began. Her mother was killed in an armed conflict, and she was forced to guide her two younger brothers to Lenk. “It took seven days to reach Lenk from Khartoum. It was very painful and we faced many challenges. The boys did not have shoes, so we I had to have it,” she told Al Jazeera.
The children are among the few who have been able to locate their families in Lenk, where they live in one of eight shelters provided by Plan International, where they are cared for by an aunt. ing. The group says the number of unaccompanied children and adolescent girls arriving in Lenk is worrying, especially as these groups are at the highest risk of sexual exploitation and abuse. It is said that it should be done.
Every day, more people arrive in Lenk than depart. Many of those continuing to work are heading to the capital, Juba, or to the refugee camp in Mabang, a 10-hour bus ride away. More than 20,000 people have arrived in Maban, and the number has rapidly increased in recent months.
This has raised concerns about the health services available to care for the new arrivals. The only provider is Relief International, which warns of high numbers of malaria and measles cases. Aid workers are providing lifesaving vaccines and medicines to residents, but more supplies are urgently needed to cope with the increase in arrivals.
Dewi Osman's family fled Sudan, but he remained in Sudan to collect crops to support his wife and children. The journey was so dangerous that he could not cook anything for fear of being discovered by armed fighters who would shoot at anything that moved.
Eventually, he became so weak that he was forced to abandon his crops by the roadside. He has been reunited with his children in Maban, and the family is receiving medical and nutritional support from Relief International.
