SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
darfur
ICC Collecting War Crimes Evidence Against Sudanese Militia After Darfur Massacre
The court said the actions of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, who are backed by a US ally in the UAE, "may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity."
Nov 04, 2025
The International Criminal Court said it is collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region following a massacre committed by a militia group and amid reports of widespread starvation.
In a statement published Monday, the ICC—the international body charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity—expressed "profound alarm and deepest concern over recent reports emerging from El-Fasher about mass killings, rapes, and other crimes" allegedly committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which breached the city last week.
According to the Sudan Doctors Network (SDN), a medical organization monitoring the country's brutal civil war, the militants slaughtered more than 1,500 people in just three days after capturing El-Fasher, among them more than 460 people who were systematically shot at the city's Saudi Maternity Hospital.
The ICC said that "such acts, if substantiated, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute," the court's founding treaty, which lays out the definitions for acts including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The court said it was "taking immediate steps regarding the alleged crimes in El-Fasher to preserve and collect relevant evidence for its use in future prosecutions."
The announcement comes shortly following a new report from the UN-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world's leading authority on hunger crises, which found that famine has been detected in El-Fasher and the town of Kadugli in Sudan's South Kordofan province. Twenty other localities in the two provinces—which have seen some of the civil war's worst fighting—are also in danger of famine, according to the report.
The two areas have suffered under siege from the RSF paramilitary, which has cut off access to food, water, and medical care. The IPC says it has led to the "total collapse of livelihoods, starvation, extremely high levels of malnutrition and death."
According to the UN's migration authority, nearly 37,000 people have been forced to flee cities across North Kordofan between October 26 and 31. They joined more than 650,000 displaced people who were already taking refuge in North Darfur's city of Tawila.
Sudan's civil war, which began in 2023, has created the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with potentially as many as 150,000 people killed since it began. Over 12 million people have been displaced, and 30.4 million people, over half of Sudan’s total population, are in need of humanitarian support.
The recent escalation of the crisis has led to heightened global scrutiny of RSF's chief financier, the United Arab Emirates. In recent days, US politicians and activists have called for the Trump administration to halt military assistance to the Gulf state, which it sold $1.4 billion in military aircraft in May.
On Tuesday, Emirati diplomats admitted for the first time that they "made a mistake" supporting the RSF as it attempted to undermine Sudan's transitional democratic government, which took power in 2019 after over three decades of rule by the Islamist-aligned dictator Omar al-Bashir. Those efforts culminated in a military coup in 2021 and an eventual power struggle for control over the country.
However, as Sudanese journalist Nesrine Malik wrote in The Guardian on Monday, the UAE "continues to deny its role, despite overwhelming evidence."
"The UAE secures a foothold in a large, strategic, resource-rich country, and already receives the majority of gold mined in RSF-controlled areas," Malik wrote. "Other actors have been drawn in, overlaying proxy agendas on a domestic conflict. The result is deadlock, quagmire, and blood loss that seems impossible to stem, even as the crisis unravels in full view."
"Sudan’s war is described as forgotten, but in reality it is tolerated and relegated," she continued. "Because to reckon with the horror in Sudan... is to see the growing imperialist role of some Gulf powers in Africa and beyond—and to acknowledge the fact that no meaningful pressure is applied to these powers, including the UAE, to cease and desist from supporting a genocidal militia because the UK, US, and others are close allies with these states."
Keep ReadingShow Less
After Horrific Massacres in Sudan, Lawmakers Call for US to Stop Funding 'Arms Dealers' in UAE
"We must do everything in our power to stop this genocide, including cutting off all weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Oct 30, 2025
After Sudan's Rapid Support Forces overran the city of el-Fasher this week, committing a series of horrific war crimes, lawmakers are calling for the US to pull its financial support for the United Arab Emirates, which is accused of providing extensive financial, military, and political support to the paramilitary group.
The Sudan Doctors Network (SDN), a medical organization monitoring the country's brutal civil war, said Wednesday that RSF militants, who are fighting against Sudan's government, killed more than 1,500 people over just three days after capturing the city, where more than 1 million people have languished under siege for more than 17 months. Sudan's armed forces say the death toll is as high as 2,000.
Among those killed, according to the World Health Organization, are more than 460 people systematically slaughtered at el-Fasher's Saudi Maternity Hospital. In what the SDN called "a heinous crime that violates all humanitarian laws and divine principles," they said RSF members "cold-bloodedly killed everyone they found inside the Saudi Hospital, including patients, their companions, and anyone else present in the wards."
One gruesome video, filmed by an RSF militant and obtained by Al Jazeera, shows a fighter walking across a floor strewn with dead bodies. When a living patient rises up from the pile, the soldier immediately guns them down.
The bloodshed in el-Fasher is so widespread and severe that Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab has been able to identify patches of bloodstained sand from space using satellite imagery.
The SDN has described the massacres as part of a “deliberate and systematic campaign of killing and extermination,” which began over a year and a half ago, when more than 14,000 civilians were killed in the region through “bombing, starvation, and extrajudicial executions.”
Death estimates for Sudan's civil war, which began in 2023, vary widely. But one former US envoy has estimated that over 150,000 people have been killed, while 12 million people have been displaced, and 30.4 million people, over half of Sudan’s total population, are in need of humanitarian support.
International human rights groups from Human Rights Watch to Amnesty International have agreed that the RSF’s actions throughout the conflict have amounted to an ethnic cleansing campaign against Sudan’s non-Arab ethnic groups, most notably the Masalit, who have historically called Darfur home and who were victims of a previous extermination campaign during the 2000s at the hands of RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed.
In January 2025—in the waning days of the Biden administration—then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined the world consensus after months of reported hesitation. He stated that the RSF "committed genocide in Sudan," citing the fact that they "targeted fleeing civilians, [murdered] innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies."
The State Department also sanctioned seven companies in the UAE, which has been the RSF's primary overseas supporter and funder, but notably declined to sanction its government, which a New York Times investigation had revealed the previous year was "funneling money, weapons and, now, powerful drones to the RSF."
As Jon Rainwater, the executive director of Peace Action, noted in Common Dreams this past May: "What makes this all the more alarming is that the UAE is one of America's closest military partners—and a major recipient of US arms. Despite repeated assurances to Washington that it would not arm Sudan's belligerents, the UAE has continued these transfers, as confirmed by the Biden administration in one of its last acts as well as by members of Congress."
He also noted that US President Donald Trump and his family have personally cultivated "deep financial ties" to the UAE, which "has invested $2 billion in a Trump family crypto venture." Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) pointed out that the investment has singlehandedly catapulted Trump's currency to "one of the five largest stablecoins in the world, massively inflating the president's wealth."
Over the past month—while negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—Trump has had friendly meetings with the UAE’s leaders where he has openly boasted about their financial entanglements. As he grasped the hand of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's deputy prime minister, Trump joked about how the oil-rich nation has "unlimited cash."
Even as warnings have piled up about an impending slaughter if the RSF took el-Fasher, journalist Oscar Rickett wrote in Middle East Eye that the dangers "were ignored as the UAE's 'unlimited cash' spoke louder."
While the Trump administration has continued the Biden-era sanctions on UAE-based companies and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has maintained the position that RSF is committing a genocide, the administration has only strengthened its economic and military relationship with the Gulf state's government.
Over objections from some Democrats, Trump's State Department in May authorized the sale of $1.4 billion in military aircraft to the UAE, which it rushed through without subjecting it to congressional review.
A group of Democrats—including Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the Africa Subcommittee—said in a joint resolution that the "end-run around Congress is irresponsible and will further embolden the UAE to... continue its support for the RSF and the killing of innocent civilians."
After news broke of the RSF's latest series of atrocities in el-Fasher, Murphy renewed his criticism of US arms sales under both the Trump and Biden administrations.
"Why is the US allowing the UAE—which we fund militarily—[to] help the brutal RSF engage in mass atrocity?" he asked on social media. "This isn't just about Trump—the Biden administration was letting this happen too."
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) urged Congress to pass a bill he introduced in March, which would halt US weapons shipments to the UAE until it stops materially supporting the militia group.
Among the strongest critics are congresspeople who have also called for the US to cease its military and financial support for Israel amid its genocide in Gaza.
"Sudan is facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis and a genocide," said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). "The UAE and other arms dealers to the RSF and RSF-aligned militias must be held accountable."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) added: "We must do everything in our power to stop this genocide, including cutting off all weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates, who are arming and funding this ethnic cleansing."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Tipping Point' Feared in Sudan as Atrocities Mount
"Now is the time to renew focus on the human rights crisis in Sudan and take all necessary measures to protect civilians and prevent further violations and abuses," said one U.N. official.
Feb 18, 2025
Warning of potential war crimes including summary executions and deliberate attacks on civilians in Sudan, the United Nations human rights office on Tuesday issued a report calling for an expanded arms embargo and other measures to protect people caught in the crossfire of nearly two years of civil war there.
Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued the report on the conflict between Sudanese government forces and the government's former allied militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has left 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said forces on both sides of the conflict have used sexual violence as a weapon of war, with at least 203 victims affected by at least 120 documented incidents.
"Cases are likely vastly underreported due to fear, stigma, and the collapse of medical and judicial institutions," said the OHCHR.
More than 12 million people have been forced from their homes as violence has targeted civilian areas and acute food insecurity has spread across the country. Famine was declared in several refugee camps and other areas late last year, with experts projecting it would spread across war-torn northern Darfur.
Nearly 25 million people in Sudan are now suffering from "acute" levels of hunger, according to the OHCHR.
The hunger crisis is spiraling as armed forces attack civilian infrastructure including healthcare facilities, schools, and markets, with hundreds of civilians killed in recent weeks. More than 150,000 people have been killed since the war began, and the U.N. documented more than 4,200 civilian killings last year—noting that the actual civilian death toll is likely far higher.
On Tuesday, the rights group Emergency Lawyers reported that more than 200 civilians, including children, were killed by the RSF in White Nile state over the past three days.
"The attacks included executions, kidnapping, forced disappearance, looting, and shooting those trying to escape," the group reported.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said the RSF had killed 433 people in the al-Gitaina area in White Nile, while the Preliminary Committee of Sudan Doctors' Trade Union said 300 people had been killed.
"The continued and deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, as well as summary executions, sexual violence, and other violations and abuses, underscore the utter failure by both parties to respect the rules and principles of international humanitarian and human rights law," said Türk.
Li Fung, who leads the OHCHR office in Sudan, said in a video statement posted to social media that "the situation in Sudan has reached a dangerous tipping point."
"Now is the time to renew focus on the human rights crisis in Sudan and take all necessary measures to protect civilians and prevent further violations and abuses," said Fung.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the human rights office, said Tuesday's report calls for the arms embargo in place for Darfur to be expanded to all of Sudan, and for the entire country to be covered by the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
The international community, said Fung, "must stand with the people of Sudan."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular