New Delhi, Jan. 24 -- The Sudan civil war has erased schooling for millions of children while the world looks elsewhere.

Sudan's civil war has produced one of the gravest and least discussed humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century. Nearly two years after fighting erupted between rival military factions, the country's education system has collapsed almost entirely, leaving more than eight million children without access to schooling for close to 500 consecutive days, according to Save the Children, which warns that the crisis now ranks among the longest education shutdowns in modern conflict history.

The scale of this collapse rivals, and in some respects exceeds, the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet unlike the pande...