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darfur
UN Experts Find 'Hallmarks of Genocide' in Sudan's War-Torn Darfur
Their report detailed the Rapid Support Forces' "systematic pattern of ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence, destruction, and public statements explicitly calling for the elimination of non-Arab communities."
Feb 19, 2026
Independent United Nations human rights experts released a report Thursday detailing allegedly genocidal crimes committed by Sudanese rebels during an October offensive in Darfur, where thousands of people were killed and others tortured, raped, and starved during the capture of el-Fasher.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan report, titled Hallmarks of Genocide in el-Fasher, found that "genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn" from the Rapid Support Forces' (RSF) "systematic pattern of ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence, destruction, and public statements explicitly calling for the elimination of non-Arab communities, particularly the Zaghawa and Fur."
According to the mission's report, RSF—a United Arab Emirates-backed paramilitary force that originated from the Janjaweed militias used by the Sudanese government during the previous 2003-05 Darfur genocide—committed at least three genocidal acts as defined by the Genocide Convention: “killing members of a protected ethnic group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part.”
“The scale, coordination, and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around el-Fasher were not random excesses of war,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, who chaired the expert panel. "They formed part of a planned and organized operation that bears the defining characteristics of genocide.”
A devastating report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, finding that the 18-month starvation siege & subsequent atrocities during the fall of El-Fasher genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...
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— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 7:19 AM
The experts' investigation focused on events in and around el-Fasher—the capital of North Darfur—as RSF militants fought to take the area last October following an 18-month siege that deprived civilians of food, water, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid. The report says the siege “systematically weakened the targeted population through starvation, deprivation, trauma, and confinement."
The RSF captured el-Fasher last October 26. Its fighters ran roughshod over the city and its inhabitants, committing widespread atrocities including mass murder and summary executions, torture, rape, and kidnapping for ransom, according to the UN Human Rights Office, which said that more than 6,000 people were killed over a two-day period.
“We want to eliminate anything Black from Darfur," one RSF fighter allegedly told residents, according to the mission report.
"Is there anyone Zaghawa among you?" one militant is accused of asking. "If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all."
Another survivor described starvation during the siege: “Life became unbearable. We were eating only... the food for livestock. When there was no more, we ate the skin of the animal. We soaked it in water and ate.”
In one of the worst atrocities of the el-Fasher offensive, RSF fighters massacred more than 460 people at the Saudi Maternity Hospital. One RSF militant recorded himself walking across a floor strewn with dead bodies and gunning down a survivor when they rise up from the pile of corpses.
The UN experts called RSF’s crimes in el-Fasher “an aggravation of earlier patterns” of attacks on other non-Arab communities in Sudan, “but on a far more lethal scale.”
"The body of evidence we collected—including the prolonged siege, starvation, and denial of humanitarian assistance, followed by mass killings, rape, torture and enforced disappearance, systematic humiliation, and perpetrators’ own declarations—leaves only one reasonable inference,” mission member Mona Rishmawi said.
“The RSF acted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Zaghawa and Fur communities in el-Fasher," she added. "These are the hallmarks of genocide."
The Zaghawa and Fur are two of the largest non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur. Both peoples have historically faced rampant discrimination and were targeted during the 2003-05 genocide. Many had already been forcibly displaced multiple times before the renewal of conflict in the spring of 2023.
That's when rival factions of Sudan’s military government—primarily the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their erstwhile RSF allies—began battling, with violence subsequently spreading rapidly throughout the northeastern African nation of 46 million people. The SAF has also been accused of widespread war crimes and has been blamed for famine conditions caused in part by its refusal to allow food aid to enter RSF-controlled areas.
The mission report lamented that "no effective measures were taken by any party to protect the civilian population," despite UN experts sounding the alarm as early as November 2023. US officials during the Biden administration were hesitant to accuse RSF fighters of genocide, reportedly because they thought it would spark criticism of then-President Joe Biden's denial of Israel's genocide in Gaza.
The US ultimately declared genocide in Darfur three weeks before Biden left office in January 2025—a determination affirmed by President Donald Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, during his Senate confirmation process.
A group of US House Democrats led by Reps. Gregory Meeks (NY) and Sara Jacobs (Calif.) have called on the Trump administration to block weapons transfers to the UAE as it arms and finances the RSF and provides diplomatic cover for its atrocities.
Last March, Sudan filed a case in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands accusing the UAE of "complicity in genocide."
Emirati officials strongly deny such allegations.
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UN Describes 'Crime Scene' in el-Fasher, Sudan After Gaining Access to War-Torn City
UN officials said they were "still very concerned about those who are injured, who we didn’t see, those who may be detained."
Dec 30, 2025
After weeks of pushing for access to el-Fasher, the city in Sudan's Darfur region that was taken over by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in October, United Nations officials reported on Tuesday that their recent visit to the city showed evidence of a "crime scene," with the few people remaining there showing signs of trauma from the mass atrocities they suffered and witnessed.
UN humanitarian workers gained access to the city last Friday, two months after the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) lost control of el-Fasher to the United Arab Emirates-backed RSF.
The city was the SAF's last major stronghold in Darfur, and fighting has now escalated in the Kordofan region.
Reuters reported that the RSF has attempted to portray el-Fasher as "back to normal" since its takeover, even as the Yale Humanitan Research Lab published a report earlier this month on the mass killings that the paramilitary group have sought hide evidence of "through burial, burning, and removal of human remains on a mass scale."
Denise Brown, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, told Reuters that the few people remaining in el-Fasher are living in empty buildings or tents made of plastic sheets. A small market was operating, but was selling only locally grown vegetables.
"The town was not teeming with people," Brown said. "There were very few people that [we] were able to see... We have photos of people, and you can see clearly on their faces the accumulation of fatigue, of stress, of anxiety, of loss."
Healthcare staff were seen at Saudi Hospital in el-Fasher, where 460 people were killed in an RSF attack, but they were working without medical supplies, Brown said.
Yale's report earlier this month relied partially in satellite imagery taken between October 26-November 28, which showed clusters of what researchers said were consistent with human remains in and around el-Fasher. More than 70% of the clusters had become smaller in satellite images by late November, and 38% were no longer visible.
The researchers said the RSF has used particular patterns of killing, including murdering people as they flee attacks, door-to-door and execution-style killings, and mass killings at detention centers and military installations.
Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, said the UN's discovery of few signs of life in el-Fasher corroborated the lab's findings.
Brown said the UN team is "still very concerned about those who are injured, who we didn’t see, those who may be detained," and told Reuters the officials plan to return to assess water and sanitation access.
About 100,000 people fled el-Fasher in October, and about three-quarters of those forced to leave the city were already internally displaced people who had fled violence as many as three or more times. In total 1.17 million el-Fasher residents have been displaced.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), released a short documentary detailing the experiences of people who left the city and are sheltering in Chad.
"They call it Paris, and now it is destroyed," a man named Noor told MSF of el-Fasher. "In the past it was a good city with all its lights on."
An estimated 30.4 Sudanese people are now in need of humanitarian assistance, and on Monday the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported unprecedented levels of child malnutrition in the Um Baru locality in northern Darfur.
More than half of children there are suffering from acute malnutrition, and 1 in 6 are severely, acutely malnourished—a condition that could kill them within weeks if left untreated.
“When severe acute malnutrition reaches this level, time becomes the most critical factor,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Children in Um Baru are fighting for their lives and need immediate help. Every day without safe and unhindered access increases the risk of children growing weaker and more death and suffering from causes that are entirely preventable.”
Many of the families observed by UNICEF fled el-Fasher in recent weeks.
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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."
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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."
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'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."
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Sudan Famine a 'Shameful Stain on Our Collective Conscience,' Says Top UN Official
"Let me be clear: It is still possible to stop this freight train of suffering that is charging through Sudan. But only if we respond with the urgency that this moment demands."
Aug 06, 2024
In an urgent appeal for financial and other resources, two top United Nations human rights officials on Tuesday condemned the world's inadequate response to a nascent famine in Sudan.
The U.N. Famine Review Committee announced last week that famine now exists in the Zamzam refugee camp near al-Fashir in North Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Sudanese are sheltering amid 15 months of a civil war that's displaced more than 10 million people and cut off delivery of desperately needed food and other aid.
Other parts of Sudan—including Greater Darfur, South Kordofan, and Khartoum—are at risk of famine.
"This announcement should stop all of us cold because when famine happens, it means we are too late," Edem Wosornu, director of the Operations and Advocacy Division at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said Tuesday.
"It means we did not do enough. It means we, the international community, have failed," she added, pointing to the numerous warnings of imminent famine over recent months. "This is an entirely man-made crisis and a shameful stain on our collective conscience."
As U.N. News reported:
The Sudanese National Army and a rival, formerly allied military, known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have been battling since April 2023, pushing "millions of civilians into a quagmire of violence and with it, death, injury, and inhumane suffering treatment."
A staggering 26 million people are facing acute hunger... More than 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes, including some 726,000 displaced from Sennar state following recent RSF advances.
Sudan's once vibrant capital, Khartoum, now lies in ruins, the national healthcare system has collapsed, and recent heavy rains in Kassala and North Darfur have increased the risk of cholera and other waterborne diseases. An entire generation of children is missing out on a second straight year of education.
"Let me be clear: It is still possible to stop this freight train of suffering that is charging through Sudan," Wosornu stressed. "But only if we respond with the urgency that this moment demands."
Justin Brady, who heads OCHA's Sudan office, told U.N. News on Monday that "if we don't have enough resources and we don't have enough access, it is going to be very difficult to stop famine conditions from taking hold" in other parts of Sudan.
"Access continues to be a major problem," he continued. "And some donors have seen that and said, well, we'll give you funding when you get access."
"Second of all, when we do get access, we need to take advantage of those openings very quickly," Brady added. "If we don't, they will close very quickly. So not having enough resources... Our appeal for this year is only a third funded, under $900 million received."
Echoing Brady, Wosornu said that "we are pushing from every possible angle to stop this catastrophe from getting worse, but we cannot go very far without the access and resources we need."
Wosornu outlined the humanitarian community's four key demands:
- Warring parties must end the conflict;
- They must uphold their obligations under international law;
- They must allow rapid, safe, and unimpeded humanitarian access across all possible routes; and
- The international community must provide adequate funding—OCHA is seeking $2.7 billion—to support aid operations.
"Assistance delayed is assistance denied for the many Sudanese civilians who are literally dying of hunger during the time it takes for clearances to come through, permits to be granted, and flood waters to subside," Wosornu warned.
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'Confirming UN Agencies' Worst Fears,' Famine Declared in Sudan Refugee Camp
"We urgently need a massive expansion of humanitarian access so we can halt the famine that has taken hold in North Darfur and stop it sweeping across Sudan," said the head of the World Food Program.
Aug 01, 2024
Following 15 months of civil war in Sudan that's displaced more than 10 million people and blocked the delivery of food to desperately hungry Sudanese, the United Nations Famine Review Committee said Thursday that famine now exists in a camp housing hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people in North Darfur.
The Famine Review Committee (FRC) published a report "confirming U.N. agencies' worst fears" about the arrival of a long-forewarned famine in the Zamzam camp. It's the committee's first famine determination in more than seven years, and only its third since its current monitoring system was created 20 years ago.
FRC warned that "other parts of Sudan risk famine if concerted action is not taken," citing a June analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—which oversees the committee—"showing a dramatic decline in food and nutrition security" and 755,000 people "facing catastrophic conditions" in 10 Sudanese states.
Unlike the reigonalized Darfur conflict of a generation ago, the current hunger crisis is affecting almost all of Sudan, including the capital Khartoum. Fighting between rival factions of Sudan's military government broke out in April 2023 and spread rapidly throughout the northeastern African nation of 46 million people. The Sudanese Armed Forces—the official state military—is fighting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and is refusing to issue permits for U.N. food aid trucks to pass through RSF-controlled territory.
"We urgently need a massive expansion of humanitarian access so we can halt the famine that has taken hold in North Darfur and stop it sweeping across Sudan," U.N. World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain said Thursday. "The warring parties must lift all restrictions and open new supply routes across borders, and across conflict lines, so relief agencies can get to cut-off communities with desperately needed food and other humanitarian aid."
"I also call on the international community to act now to secure a cease-fire in this brutal conflict and end Sudan's slide into famine," McCain added. "It is the only way we will reverse a humanitarian catastrophe that is destabilizing this entire region of Africa."
In Khartoum, hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to find food. People venturing outside of their homes in search of food run the risk of being shot or shelled. Fighting around Sinja, the capital of Sennar state, has fueled mass displacement and cut off crucial aid routes.
"Worse yet, the war in Sudan has by now displaced an astounding 10 million people from their homes, more than 4 million of them children—a figure that looks like but isn't a misprint," Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox wrote for TomDispatch this week. "Many have had to move multiple times and 2 million Sudanese have taken refuge in neighboring countries. Worse yet, with so many people forced off their land and away from their workplaces, the capacity of farmers to till the soil and other kinds of workers to hold down a paycheck and to buy food for their families has been severely disrupted."
Even Jazirah state—which is located between the Blue and White Nile rivers and is known as Sudan's breadbasket—is now suffering from emergency levels of food insecurity.
Some areas of Darfur haven't received any food aid in over a year as fighting has rendered it practically impossible for humanitarian workers to operate. According to a February report by Doctors Without Borders, one child is dying of starvation every two hours, and nearly 40% of infants and toddlers are malnourished.
"This famine is fully man-made," United Nations Children's Fund Executive Director Catherine Russell said Thursday. "We again call on all the parties to provide the humanitarian system with unimpeded and safe access to children and families in need. We must be able to use all routes, across lines of conflict and borders."
"Sudan's children cannot wait," she added. "They need protection, basic services, and most of all, a cease-fire and peace."
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'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Times reported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reuters reported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Post called it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
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UN Agencies Call for International Aid as War-Torn Sudan Faces Famine Threat
"Extreme hunger is unfolding" as a civil war enters its second year and funding is slow to arrive, the agencies warned.
May 31, 2024
A group of United Nations agencies and humanitarian groups sounded the alarm Friday that 18 million Sudanese are acutely hungry as a civil war that began in April 2023 continues to ravage the country.
The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), a group of 12 U.N. agencies and 7 humanitarian organizations, issued a statement on the staggering scale of hunger and insecurity in Sudan, including in the Darfur region in the country's west. They called for an immediate influx of international funding—billions of dollars of which has already been pledged, but not yet delivered—so that food could be planted before the rainy season.
"Extreme hunger is unfolding, and the outlook for food production in 2024 is bleak," according to the statement. "We have a rapidly shrinking window to get seeds to farmers before the main planting season ends and the rainy season begins."
At a conference in Paris last month, following an earlier cry for action, countries pledged a total of $2.7 billion in aid for Sudan, but so far only 16% of that money has been disbursed, according to IASC. The food shortage has been worsened by drought and flooding, likely exacerbated by climate change.
A major obstacle to aid delivery is not just lack of funds but also the civil war, which has seriously impeded the IASC organizations aid efforts.
"If they continue to be prevented from providing aid in Sudan rapidly and at scale, a famine will likely take hold in large parts of the country," Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), one of the IASC agencies, said Friday in Geneva, according to Voice of America. "More people will flee to neighboring countries. Children will succumb to disease and malnutrition, and women and girls will face even greater suffering and dangers."
Sudan has one of the highest numbers of internally displaced people of any country in the world, roughly 10 million, and the number continues to climb as the war goes on. Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, has been a somewhat safe zone that many displaced people have moved to, but as the two sides in the conflict jockey for position there, that status is in jeopardy. A fragile truce in the city fell apart on May 10 and a battle there is already underway, according to The Economist. IASC warned that it may only get worse.
"More than 800,000 civilians [in Al-Fashir] are bracing for an imminent large-scale attack, which would unleash catastrophic humanitarian consequences both in the city and across Darfur," the authors of the statement said, warning that the effects of the war on everyday people are dire. "Horrific attacks against civilians—including sexual violence—as well as hospitals and schools are multiplying," they also said.
Clementine Nkweta-Salami, U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, also warned in a statement Thursday that "the noose of war is tightening its stranglehold on a civilian population that is under attack from all sides."
You will never understand the pains, the agony, the fear and the suffering until war comes to your doorstep.
Here is what people in Sudan 🇸🇩 are going through where people are being killed tortured and a looming famine have left Millions of people hungry in Sudan. Since a power… pic.twitter.com/UA2bZkt0Je
— Typical African (@Joe__Bassey) May 30, 2024
The civil war pits the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group. The two sides shared power over the country for two years before the war began. Their rivalry has been fueled in part by outside forces: both SAF and RSF have international backers, making this a regional proxy war, according to Foreign Policy.
In the 2000s, Darfur became a cause célèbre, but the current crisis has been overlooked, especially given international attention on Gaza and Ukraine, Foreign Policy reported.
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Against Global Indifference to Atrocities in Darfur
As this genocide unfolds before our eyes, it’s clear that the international community’s promise of “Never Again” is not even a rhetorical commitment.
May 11, 2024
As the deadly war in Sudan enters its second year, it is nearly impossible to overstate the global indifference and inaction in the face of ongoing devastating mass atrocities in Sudan. The international community’s virtual silence continues despite the imminent risk of genocide and crimes against humanity in El Fasher as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, besieges Darfur’s largest city, where essential supplies are running out.
Seventy-five years ago, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – and with it, made the solemn promise to prevent the worst horrors of the 20th century from ever happening again.
Twenty years ago, a massive movement emerged in the United States rallying behind the populations at risk of genocide in Darfur. However, the absence of a significant transitional justice period led to the same cycles of genocidal violence today – the same perpetrators committing the same crimes of destruction against the same victim groups with impunity. As this genocide in Darfur unfolds before our eyes, it’s clear that the international community’s promise of “Never Again” is not even a rhetorical commitment, despite the clear legal obligations imposed on all States to act under the Genocide Convention.
Since April 2023, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, nearly nine million people (the largest number globally) forcibly displaced from their homes, including more than 4 million children, and an untold number affected by violence and deadly diseases within a decimated health care system, where 70-80 percent of hospitals and other health care facilities are no longer functional.
The war is creating “the world’s largest hunger crisis,” warned the Executive Director of the U.N. World Food Programme. The looming famine threatens to drive 7 million people into catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Level 5) by June, during the lean season. More than half the population is in need of humanitarian aid and food assistance. According to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in Zamzam displaced persons’ camp near El Fasher, about 30 percent of the children have been found to be suffering from acute malnutrition. Earlier in February, MSF reported at least one child dies every two hours in the camp.
The war has led to genocidal attacks, displacement, disease, and famine, culminating in one of the gravest humanitarian crises of our time. Yet, amidst the harrowing cries for help echoing from this embattled region, the international community remains disturbingly silent. While conflicts elsewhere capture headlines, the plight of the Sudanese people often goes unnoticed, relegated to the side-lines. And while the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ 2024 plan for Sudan identified that at least $2.7 billion was needed, only 10.3 percent of that minimum had been funded as of Apr. 25. This lack of attention not only prolongs human suffering and serves as a stain on the international community’s collective consciousness, but also sends a chilling message: that some lives are deemed more expendable than others.
A Repeat Genocide, and a Repeat Failure
Last year, following the rising level of incitement and ethnically targeted killing against members of non-Arab groups in El Geneina and other parts of Darfur, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (where we work) and leading experts on genocide and Sudan sounded the alarm on the serious risk of genocide and urged the international community to act immediately to prevent genocide, and hold the perpetrators and their enablers accountable.
In mid-April, a year since the outbreak of the devastating war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF, we released the first independent legal analysis into breaches of the Genocide Convention in Darfur. We served as the primary authors of the report, with contributions and endorsements from dozens of world-leading jurists and scholars in the field, including founding prosecutors of the international criminal tribunals, former supreme court justices, and presidents of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Independent Inquiry Conclusions
The inquiry applies a State and entity accountability legal framework, rather than individual criminal liability – and identifies the perpetrators and enablers responsible for breaches of the Genocide Convention. Accordingly, the report applies standards used by U.N. investigative teams, including clear and convincing evidence and reasonable grounds. The report’s evidence (available in the nearly 400 footnotes) is largely drawn from open-source information, including pertinent U.N. reports between April 2023 and April 2024. The analysis is geographically limited to Darfur due to the ethnically motivated nature and severity of the attacks against non-Arab groups there.
Based on this analysis, we reached the following conclusions, the evidentiary bases of which are explained in detail in the full report.
First, based on clear and convincing evidence, the RSF has committed and is committing genocide against the non-Arab Masalit group in West Darfur. Despite the early signs, the international community failed to prevent the genocide in West Darfur.
Second, based on the first conclusion, and as established by the ICJ in Bosnia v. Serbia, all 153 State parties to the Genocide Convention are under the obligation to halt and prevent the genocide and a corresponding duty act. The international community has long avoided responding adequately to the Darfur genocide. As the U.N. Coordinator for Sudan at the time of the first genocide (and author of the report’s preface), Mukesh Kapila, made abundantly clear, “Darfur in 2003 was a highly preventable genocide.” Information was made available in real time during the early 2000s and is available now. We all knew then. We all know now. The failure to enforce the Genocide Convention is a matter of choice.
Third, based on clear and convincing evidence, the RSF and its allied militia are responsible for direct and public incitement to genocide against the Masalit in West Darfur. The report extensively details the direct incitement expressed often as explicit intent to destroy non-Arab groups preceding genocidal acts. The RSF militias make blanket calls to “kill Masalit” or “shoot the boys,” use language such as “we must destroy them now,” and repeatedly refer to members of non-Arab groups as “slaves,” “dogs,” or “dirt.” This pattern of open dehumanization and incitement results in the most brutal forms of identity-based atrocities.
Fourth, based on clear and convincing evidence, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (bearing greatest responsibility), Chad, the Central African Republic, Russia via the Wagner Group, and Sudan are complicit in the genocide. Each of these States is complicit by providing the RSF with political, geographic, financial, and military support directly fuelling the genocide.
Fifth and finally, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the RSF and its allied Arab militia are committing genocide against non-Arab populations other than the Masalit, mainly the Fur and Zaghawa.
Subsequent Developments Show the International Community Must Act Now
Since we released the report in April, shocking levels of violence continue to unfold. The RSF has razed villages on its way to attacking El Fasher, signaling the imminent and catastrophic risk of genocide there. The early signs we are witnessing in and around El Fasher are similar to what we have seen in El Geneina. These include deliberate incitement campaigns against the non-Arab Zaghawa and Fur populations. Recently, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield sounded the alarm, saying El Fasher “is on the precipice of a large-scale massacre.”
The calamity in El Fasher will affect even more people than the massacres and systematic sexual violence committed in El Geneina against the Masalit. According to the U.N., El Fasher is now home to more than 1.5 million people, including over 800,000 displaced persons, many of whom have recently fled RSF atrocities in other States. While El Geneina is at least within walking distance of Adré, Chad, El Fasher is out of reach of safe destinations for the impending waves of fleeing communities. Without a robust prevention and protection plan, these vulnerable civilians will be left for death. Further, the dry season in Sudan, coupled with desert lands in North Darfur, will undoubtedly exacerbate the already catastrophic situation.
Immediate Responses to Prevent Genocide
Placing Darfur’s crisis as a top priority on the global agenda is critical. Now that the international community is aware of the risks in El Fasher, all States are under the obligation to decisively act to protect populations in El Fasher and live up to their commitment under the Genocide Convention and international law.
First, the international community must be prepared for the worst to come. If the U.N. Security Council is unable to authorize a peacekeeping force to protect civilians, the international community should create safe areas and passage for civilians at risk of genocide. At a minimum, the U.N. Security Council should host an emergency meeting to raise the profile and shine a protective spotlight on the populations at risk. The urgency of the situation in El Fasher demands immediate action and cannot wait for the complex bureaucratic process of deploying troops.
Second, the African Union member States should take the lead and uphold their promise and commitment to prevent genocide through all reasonable means. Moreover, African States cannot become safe havens for the genocidaires and their enablers. Instead, such actors must be held accountable and made international pariahs.
Third, States should impose immediate costs on the outside actors fueling this conflict and genocide, in open defiance of the U.N. arms embargo and sanctions measures of Resolution 1591, including, most prominently, the UAE. The U.N. Panel of Experts on Sudan already identified some of the financing and arms supply networks in its findings, which should now be targeted with concrete sanctions. The U.N. Security Council can further add the implicated entities to its consolidated sanctions list.
Fourth, the International Criminal Court must issue arrest warrants against all perpetrators involved in atrocity crimes in Darfur. Arrest warrants will put the world on notice and at least disqualify the RSF leaders from international diplomacy and engagement.
Fifth, the international community must call out the specific individuals behind the genocide and other atrocities as well as their enablers. In particular, the RSF’s commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (a.k.a Hemedti) must be directly held accountable for his command responsibility over the RSF.
Finally, the international community must urgently and timely deploy the recent pledges made by donors at the Paris conference for Sudan — the only way to start adequately addressing the needs of 18 million Sudanese facing acute levels of food insecurity.
In a climate of apathy and cynicism around an impartial and effective system of international law, these are the bare minimum common-sense steps that States should take today to stop the genocide in Darfur and support the communities most impacted and at risk.
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