International

Children Of War: Growing Up In Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, And Haiti

There is a fiction in global media that war is still a matter of soldiers and statesmen. But in Sudan, Haiti, Ukraine, and Myanmar, the most endangered bodies are small, malnourished, and unarmed. These children are not collateral damage, they are structural casualties of state collapse, militia rule, imperial memory, and diplomatic indifference. Children starve in camps blockaded by militias, they dodge bullets on the way to fetch water, they take shelter in school basements turned bunkers, they run from airstrikes into mine-laced forests. Across these four conflict zones, the faces change, but the story is the same: childhood stolen by war, and the world looking away. This photo essay follows the youngest survivors of failed states, foreign invasions, and forgotten wars. Their lives, captured in fragments, speak a truth sharper than any headline.

Haiti civil unrest: Displaced children
Haiti unrest | Photo: Steven Aristil/Anadolu via Getty Images

Children who are in a refugee camp because of the gang war are seen at Carrefour Feuilles in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 05, 2023. Hundreds of people have been forced to flee their homes and seek refuge in camps due to the gang war as they await the deployment of the army to help restore order in the country.

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Haiti civil unrest: Displaced children
Haiti unrest | Photo: In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images

In the immediate aftermath of the flight into French exile of the Haitian president "Baby Doc" Duvalier, residents in the city of Port-au-Prince go on city wide rampage and looting. The army attempt to intervene with little success such was the hate for the regime. Haiti.

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Haiti civil unrest: Displaced children
Haiti unrest | Photo: Georges Harry Rouzier/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Children wait for food at the garden of the shelter in Delmas, Port-Au-Prince, Haiti on July 24, 2022. Children, separated from their parents due to the gang war in the city of Cite Soleil, are housed in several schools in neighboring towns.

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Haiti civil unrest: Displaced children
Haiti unrest | Photo: David Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

US Marine Carrying a Haitian Boy.

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Myanmar Rohingya crisis and children
Myanmar conflict | Photo: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Rohingya refugee children play in Balukhali camp on January 14, 2018 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Over 650,000 Rohingya have crossed the border to Bangladesh since August last year, fleeing the violence at Rakhine State when their villages were attacked and many worry that they will face further reprisals if they return to Myanmar.

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Myanmar Rohingya crisis and children
Myanmar conflict | Photo: Thierry Falise/LightRocket via Getty Images

Per Ler, 12-year-old soldier, training in Kamerplaw, southern Burma - headquarters of God's Army. God's Army is a tiny breakaway faction of the Christian Karen National Union, consisting of less than 200 soldiers and led by twin brothers, Johnny and Luther Htoo, then barely teenage.

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Myanmar Rohingya crisis and children
Myanmar conflict | Photo: Patrick AVENTURIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

The Karen Guerilla Growing Out Of Childhood With A Gun In Hand On January 12Th, 1988, Myanmar.

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Myanmar Rohingya crisis and children
Myanmar conflict | Photo: Patrick AVENTURIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

The Karen Guerilla Growing Out Of Childhood With A Gun In Hand On January 12Th, 1988, Myanmar.

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Sudanese civil war: Sudan childrens crisis
Sudanese civil war | Photo: Bernard Bisson/Sygma via Getty Images

Sudanese refugees gather for a distribution of water at the refugee camp of Kitgun, located at the border between Sudan and Uganda, where Sudanese refugees found shelter. This comes as a consequence of the Sudanese civil conflict opposing black Christians and animists in the south to the Arab-Muslims in the north, causing the displacement of millions of people.

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Sudanese civil war: Sudan childrens crisis
Sudanese civil war | Photo: Bernard Bisson/Sygma via Getty Images

Children receive food and medical treatment at a refugee camp in Juba, Sudan. Widespread famine and civil war have ravaged Sudan for decades, resulting in more than 4 million people displaced since 1983.

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Sudanese civil war: Sudan childrens crisis
Sudanese civil war | Photo: © Viviane Moos/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

A Sudanese child suffering from malnutrition seeks help at a hospital in Aswa, Sudan. Civil war and widespread famine have ravaged Sudan for decades, resulting in more than 2 million deaths and over 4 million people displaced since 1983.

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Sudanese civil war: Sudan childrens crisis
Sudanese civil war | Photo: Eva-Maria Krafczyk/picture alliance via Getty Images

Children play in front of the barracks in Transit Camp 2 in the South Sudanese border town of Renk. The camp was originally planned for 3,000 people, who were to travel on to their new destinations after two weeks. The bloody power struggle in Sudan, which has been ongoing since April 2023, has triggered what the UN says is the world's largest refugee crisis. More than eight million people have fled within Sudan or to neighboring countries such as South Sudan and Chad.

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Russia Ukraine War: Ukraines children
Russia-Ukraine War | Photo: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Elena Pomaz from Kherson cries as she holds her children, Liza, 6, and Sofia, 4 months, on a refugee train on July 1, 2022 in Dnipro, Ukraine. The family got emotional after relatives came on board to visit them, saying goodbye was difficult.

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Russia Ukraine War: Ukraine childrens crisis
Russia-Ukraine War | Photo: AP/Efrem Lukatsky

A woman with a child reacts as she holds a photo of her missing husband during an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine, in Chernyhiv region, Ukraine, Sunday, May 25, 2025.

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Russia Ukraine War: Ukraine childrens crisis
Russia-Ukraine War | Photo: Oleksandr Magula/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

Woman with girl run away from Palace of Culture "Chemist" on July 4, 2023, in Pervomaiskyi, Ukraine. People gathered on the main square near the Palace of Culture "Chemist" for the funeral ceremony for Oleh Fadieienko, a fallen soldier of the "Kraken" regiment.

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Russia Ukraine War: Ukraine childrens crisis
Russia-Ukraine War | Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

An orphan boy hugs a soft toy as he waits on a train after fleeing the town of Polohy which has come under Russian control before evacuating on a train from Zaporizhzhia to western Ukraine on March 26, 2022 in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.

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