United Nations investigators are accusing both of Sudan’s warring parties and their allied militias Friday of an appalling range of human rights violations that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The report, the first by the three-member Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan, presents a harrowing account of large-scale violations, including “indiscriminate and direct attacks carried out through airstrikes and shelling against civilians, schools, hospitals, communication networks and vital water and electricity supplies.”
Mona Rishwami, expert member of the fact-finding mission, told journalists in Geneva that both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) “conducted hostilities in densely populated areas,” damaging and destroying infrastructure and objects that were “indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.”
“We found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both SAF and RSF and their respective allies have committed the war crimes of violence against life and persons, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture, and committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliation and degrading treatment,” she said.
The 19-page report, which will be submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council next week, is based on over 700 submissions from various entities, organizations, individuals and experts.
Sudanese authorities refused to grant investigators access to the country, so they gathered information and evidence of violations through in-depth interviews with 182 victims, their families and other eyewitnesses during visits to Chad, Kenya, and Uganda.
“Since mid-April 2023, the conflict in Sudan has spread to 14 of 18 states impacting the entire country and the region,” Mohamed Chande Othman, chairperson of the fact-finding mission, said.
Over the past 17 months, the conflict has uprooted millions of people from their homes. U.N. officials estimate 10.7 million people are displaced inside Sudan with some 2 million others having fled to neighboring countries as refugees, making Sudan the world’s largest displacement crisis.
“It is our view that the conflict is protracted and has engulfed the territory, affecting the whole of Sudan,” Othman said, adding that the true scale of the devastation caused by the conflict and the extent of suffering of the population is yet to be known, but the impact from the horrors inflicted upon the Sudanese “will last for decades to come.”
“We have found that the Sudanese warring parties … have committed an appalling range of violations,” he said. “We found reasonable grounds to believe that many of these violations amount to international crimes.”
The report accuses the warring parties of targeting civilians through rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as torture and ill-treatment.
Fact-finding mission expert Joy Ngozi Ezeilo observed that women and children are among the main victims.
“Conflict-related sexual violence in Sudan has a long and tragic history and often is used as a weapon of war to terrorize and control communities,” she said.
While both parties to the conflict are guilty of rape and sexual violence, Ezeilo said that members of the RSF in particular have perpetrated the crimes on a large scale in Darfur and the greater Khartoum area.
“Victims recounted being attacked in their homes, beaten, lashed and threatened with death or harm to their relatives or children before being raped by more than one perpetrator,” she said. “They were also subjected to sexual violence while seeking shelter from attack or fleeing.”
The report also found that the RSF and its allied militias “committed the additional war crimes of rape, sexual slavery, and pillage, as well as ordering the displacement of the civilian population and the recruitment of children below 15 in hostilities.”
Investigators condemned what they called the “horrific assaults” carried out by the RSF and its allies against non-Arab communities — specifically the Masalit in and around El Geneina, West Darfur — including “killings, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, destruction of property and pillage.”
The report describes in searing detail the abuse to which children are subjected. Beyond recruitment for battle, children have been “killed, injured, forcibly displaced, detained with adults, tortured, subjected to sexual violence and deprived of healthcare and education.”
“The rare brutality of this war will have a devastating and long-lasting psychological impact on children in Sudan,” Ezeilo said.
Mission chairperson Othman warned that “The gravity of our findings and failure of the warring parties to protect civilians underscores the need for urgent and immediate intervention.
“Our report therefore calls and recommends for the deployment of an independent, impartial force to protect civilians in the country,” adding that both sides to the conflict must comply with their obligations under international law and “immediately and unconditionally cease all attacks on the civilian population.
The people of Sudan, he added, “have suffered greatly and the violations against them must stop.”
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