I have seen a lot of suffering in my life. But the pain of the swarms of displaced people and refugees in Darfur was particularly poignant. It brought tears to my eyes. I was particularly crushed by the suffering of the war-affected children in Darfur.

Those children are invariably the most vulnerable whenever their homes are attacked by marauding militias. They let out shrill, desolate wails that should prick everyone’s conscience. When their homes are attacked, they run helter-skelter across villages, too terrified to comprehend what is going on in their once peaceful hamlets.

They watch as their parents are raped and killed. They watch as their homes are laid waste by armed militias. Some of them are sexually molested in the process. They lose their childhood at a stroke. They are wounded, robbed and scarred in by war criminals who don’t care at all.

The ongoing conflict has orphaned, widowed and wrought untold suffering to thousands of families. Now huddled in plastic dwellings across camps that dot Darfur, many are struggling to cope with their new, despondent life. Many children in Darfur told me stories that pluck at my heartstrings to date.

I remember eight-year-old Fatima Osman (pictured above). She narrated to me how her village was attacked two years ago. It was the second attack on the village in a span of five months. An earlier raid by camel-riding armed Arab militia had robbed the village of 13 men and left tens injured. During this second raid, Fatima’s father was killed by the militias.

“When the attackers came, the men sent us [women and children] away to safety and they remained in the village to fight off the militias. My father was killed in the fighting,” she said, her voice tailing off in a fit of emotion.

Fatima, her five siblings, their mother and hundreds of fellow villagers scampered from the village on trucks, donkey-backs and on foot. Fatima not only lost her father but also the family’s property, livestock and some neighbors who also died in the attack. “The attackers were shooting randomly across the village,” Fatima recalled.

Her older sister, Hawa, who is deaf and dumb ran in panic around the homestead barefoot, only to be pinned down by the attackers who reportedly molested her in the process.

Wounded, robbed and scarred in the extreme, Fatima’s family poured into Kalma, the largest camp for displaced persons in war-wracked South Darfur, their lives changed completely.

I met Fatima outside her family’s squat and narrow hovel made of plastic sheets, burlap sacks and weaved straw – odds and ends that the found strewn in the camp. They needed anything they could find.

Fatima is one of the millions of displaced children who may never return to their homes due to the Darfur conflict. They have lived in cramped camps for four years. No one knows how much longer they will remain hunkered down in the squalid camps because the intractable conflict grows more vicious by the day.

Thankfully, amidst the sea of gloom in Darfur’s camps, children like Fatima have proven to be islands of hope. Many are piecing together what was left of their lives with amazing fortitude – with a lot of help from humanitarian organizations.

These organizations have set up centers where children like Fatima can meet, play, learn and forget the dent wrecked on their lives by the conflict in Darfur.

But will the millions of war-affected children in Darfur ever forget the horrors they have witnessed and undergone even before reaching their teenage years? I doubt it.

However, we can all help Darfur’s children to regain their childhood by advocating for an end to the conflict now and supporting the humanitarian efforts that are keeping the children alive amidst the senseless violence around them.