NAIROBI, Dec 5, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - A former child soldier has urged the world to do more to help children devastated by Sudan's brutal civil war, telling AFP on Thursday that "we can't just leave them to it".

Since April 2023, the conflict between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands, and displaced almost 11 million -- among them five million children. 

The United Nations warned earlier this year that "an entire generation could be destroyed", with millions facing disease and malnutrition.

During a visit this week to the eastern city of Port Sudan, UNICEF goodwill ambassador Ishmael Beah -- who was himself forcibly recruited into a Sierra Leone militia aged just 13 -- met with displaced children and families.

"This collapse has really devastated a lot of their lives," he told AFP in Nairobi shortly after the visit.

"It's been difficult to constantly see what I experienced so many years ago is still happening to people."

Beah described the plight of one woman he met, whose cousin and his wife were shot and killed after trying to defend themselves, leaving their child an orphan.

"So she took that child and basically ran with that child," he said, describing it as just one case of remarkable resilience that he encountered. 

"There are a lot of stories of rape and people being killed and constant bombardment, and people just running," he added.

"It's that restlessness and constant travel, the walking, and particularly for the girls, also then encountering checkpoints," he said. 
"There is a lot of rape."

Beah said he had expected people's spirits to be broken, but that was not what he found.

He said many of the young people he met were tough and, armed with the internet, keen to share their own stories with the world. 

"The message that all of them repeated over and over again was: 'Can the world please help to end the war?'

"'We don't care how they do it, but let it stop.'"