Leading human rights investigators in Sudan’s brutal war called Friday for a nationwide arms embargo, saying warring parties have committed horrific human rights violations and international crimes, many of which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The researchers also called for the establishment of a peacekeeping force, either led by the UN or a regional body.
“Since mid-April 2023, the conflict in Sudan has spread to 14 of the 18 states, affecting the entire country and the region, leaving eight million Sudanese internally displaced as a result of the conflict, and more than two million forced to flee to neighbouring countries,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, Chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan.
First conclusions
In its first report on the crisis since its creation by the Human Rights Council of the UN in Geneva in October 2023, the group insisted that rival armies, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as well as their respective allies, were responsible for direct, indiscriminate and large-scale attacks, including airstrikes and bombings, against civilians, schools, hospitals, communication networks and vital supplies of water and electricity, indicating a total disregard for the protection of non-combatants.
The three independent human rights experts who led the mission’s work, Mohamed Chande Othman (chair), Joy Ngozi Ezeilo and Mona Rishmawi, stressed that responsibility for the serious violations lay with “both parties and their respective allies” and that many of them constituted international crimes.
“In particular, we noted that both the SAF and the RSF carried out hostilities in densely populated areas, including through constant attacks and artillery bombardments in different cities, including Khartoum and different cities in Darfur, among others,” Rishmawi testified.
Testimonies of survivors
Although the Government of Sudan has refused to cooperate with the Fact-Finding Mission after rejecting its mandate, investigators have collected first-hand testimonies from 182 survivors, relatives and eyewitnesses. Extensive consultations have also been carried out with experts and civil society activists to corroborate and verify other leads.
“RSF members in particular have perpetrated large-scale sexual violence in the context of attacks on towns in the Darfur region and the Khartoum metropolitan area,” Ezeilo insisted. “Victims reported being attacked in their homes, beaten, whipped and threatened with death or harm to their family members or children before being raped by more than one perpetrator. They were also subjected to sexual violence while seeking refuge from attacks or fleeing. Similarly, We found evidence of women being subjected to sexual slavery after being kidnapped by RSF members.”
Horrors in El Geneina
The panel’s report also provided information on “large-scale, ethnically-based attacks against the non-Arab civilian population,” particularly against the Masalit people in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, an ethnically diverse city of about 540,000 people.
Shortly after the outbreak of war, the RSF and allied militias attacked the city, killing thousands of people, according to investigators, with “horrific assaults… torture, rape” and destruction of property and looting the norm.
“Masalit men were systematically targeted for killing,” the Mission’s report continues. “RSF and its allied militias went door to door in Masalit neighbourhoods, searching for men and brutally attacking and killing them, sometimes in front of their families. Lawyers, doctors, human rights defenders, academics, and community and religious leaders were targeted. RSF commanders gave orders to “comb the city” and set up checkpoints throughout the town.”
Highlighting the Sudanese army’s failure to protect civilians in towns and in camps for those uprooted by war, the rights experts urged the international community to extend the current arms embargo on Darfur to the entire country. “Depriving the parties of weapons and ammunition, including new supplies of ammunition and weapons, will help curb the appetite for hostilities,” Othman said.
Call to the international community
The researchers also called for the establishment of a peacekeeping force by the international community, either under the auspices of the UN or a regional body:
“The United Nations can do it“And in the neighbouring country, South Sudan, there is a mandate for the United Nations to protect civilians in certain countries,” Rishmawi said. “This can also be done, as we know, from the African Union as well, so regional organisations can really do it.”
The breakdown of law and order in Sudan is such that children are widely recruited to take part in the conflict, too, the researchers said. “The SAF is mobilized and sometimes does so in schools, but its allied forces have been recruiting children and have been using children in combat. And This is the distinction that is found in our report. It is much more systematic and widespread on the part of RSF.“Rishmawi said.
“There must be accountability” for this and other crimes, he continued, calling for the creation of a special tribunal to hold perpetrators accountable for the serious crimes that continue to be committed across Sudan with total impunity.
“These people must be held accountable. The fact that they were not held accountable in previous conflicts is what has turned the women’s corps into the operational site of this war.“This has to end, and the only way to end it is to have an international judicial mechanism, because there is no trust,” he said.
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