Setbacks and Silver Linings: 2024 In Review

Guest blog by our President and CEO, Danny Glenwright. 

This past year often felt like a storm cloud rolling across the sky. 

It was a year of new and escalating conflicts and an increase in the number of children living in crisis. Climate change affected more children this year than in years past. We also saw a continuing backlash against human rights, especially for women and girls and their bodily autonomy. 

In particular, the ongoing conflict in Sudan has been very troubling. Since fighting started in the capital, Khartoum, last spring, there has been a significant increase in violations of children’s rights across the country.  

“We thought [the fighting] would stop, but it kept going all night,” says Rana, a mother who fled her home with her husband and their five children when the conflict began. “We thought the situation would calm down in the morning [but] the next morning, the fighting did not stop. We couldn’t even buy food for our children. We could only consume what we already had at home.” 

Even prior to the outbreak of conflict, the people of Sudan faced one of the worst humanitarian crises ever, with one in two needing humanitarian assistance to meet their basic needs. However, since April 2023, more than 5.8 million children have been displaced from their homes, and another 10 million are still living within 5 km of the conflict’s frontlines – representing the highest rate of child exposure to conflict in the world.

Especially worrying is that, unlike other crises in 2024, the media and other global actors have largely overlooked this conflict — resulting in many violations against children’s rights going unchecked. 

Since January 2024 though, Save the Children has reached a total of 1,657,967 million people, including 1,010,495 children with mobile health clinics, medical supplies, temporary schools, cash grants for families and more.  

Our response to the crisis in Sudan was just one silver lining to the dark cloud that otherwise was 2024. 

Another came early in 2024, when Sierra Leone passed a new bill, effectively banning child marriage across the country. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Bill 2024 includes penalties for offenders, protection of victims’ rights, and the requirement to ensure access to education and support services for young girls affected by child marriage.

Having spent time in Sierra Leone in the years following its civil war, I know that it has some of the highest rates of child marriage, early pregnancy and maternal mortality in the world. This new Bill will go a long way towards reducing these rates. 

Perhaps most importantly, while Save the Children in Sierra Leone supported efforts to criminalize the practice of child marriage, girls and young women led this work — including Save the Children child marriage champions — banding together to speak up for their rights. 

There was also a third silver lining in the form of the first ever international project for the National Reconciliation Program at Save the Children. The project is a partnership with the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations, the National Organization of Andean and Amazonian Women of Peru and the Continental Network of Indigenous Women of the Americas, South Region. It aims to build climate resilience and support Indigenous-led climate action projects in Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala and Peru.

This is a significant step forward for the National Reconciliation Program and a moment that is well worth celebrating. 

Throughout 2024, I participated in many discussions about finding more efficient and effective ways of working and partnering so our organization can meet the growing needs of children around the world, especially those in crisis situations. 

Because of this, as I look towards 2025, I feel optimistic. Despite so many of the challenges facing them, children — like the young women in Sierra Leone — have been galvanized to speak up, to defend their rights and demand that those in power take their experiences and opinions into consideration. 

My hope for next year is that in some of the most challenging places for children right now, particularly in Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan, world leaders find lasting solutions to their problems. A path towards peace and reconciliation, recovery and rehabilitation is more important now than ever. 

None of our work in 2024 and into 2025 is possible without our wonderful community of supporters. Thank you for your continued support. 

Finally, I would like to share part of a story I heard recently from Salah, a mother in Sudan, who has been receiving assistance from Save the Children. Salah’s resilience and efforts to protect and support her children remind me why we do what we do every day, and I expect you might feel the same: 

“Life in the school shelter was very difficult . . . you [only felt] safe because you [did] not hear the sounds of bombs, bullets falling and military demonstrations.   

[Now] I feel now that I am in ‘five stars.’ The atmosphere is wonderful . . . there is a kind of privacy for me and my children in one place . . . we [feel] that we own something that belongs to us, a sense of ownership as if the room is yours. The children’s behaviour [has] really changed . . . here I feel that my children are happy and comfortable.”