(RNS) — Ten-year-old Waleed ran for days to escape the fighting after men with guns came to his town. He lost track of the grandmother who had been caring for him and traveled with strangers, sleeping wherever he could.

When he finally reached a camp for displaced people, he had no idea where his family was. He was hungry, scared — and yet still found the courage to keep going alone.

This is what the crisis in Sudan looks like for children right now.

Sudan’s war is displacing more people than any other crisis in the world. As violence escalates, families are uprooted again and again — often with little warning and nowhere safe to go. In the chaos, children get separated from their families and are left alone.

In one recent surge of violence in Darfur, our teams reported that more than 22,600 people were newly displaced. Nearly two-thirds of them were children.…