More than 2 million children displaced in South Sudan

More than 2,000 children have been killed or injured, and many more have witnessed horrific violence due to the raging civil war in South Sudan.

An elderly woman displaced by fighting in South Sudan rests by her belongings in Lamwo after fleeing fighting in Pajok town across the border in northern Uganda, April 5, 2017.
TRT World and Agencies

An elderly woman displaced by fighting in South Sudan rests by her belongings in Lamwo after fleeing fighting in Pajok town across the border in northern Uganda, April 5, 2017.

Millions of children in South Sudan are suffering unthinkable hardships and setbacks in their education, nutrition, and health.

That's according to new numbers from UNICEF, released ahead of the country's sixth independence day.

The UN body says more than two million children have been forced from their homes to escape fighting. And the country has the highest percentage of children out of school, in the world.

South Sudan's war, sparked when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup in 2013, has been marked by numerous atrocities against civilians despite the presence of thousands of UN peacekeeping troops.

Civil war has raged on for the past three years with such viciousness that parts of the country are bereft of food and a third of the population has fled their homes.

Around 1.8 million South Sudanese have fled the country, making it the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world.

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