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or more than 500 days, unleashed violence has claimed more than 150,000 lives in Sudan, and has caused, in El Geneina alone, in West Darfur, approximately 15,000 people (mostly members of the ethnic Massalit tribe) to be killed in only two months. The international com munity’s efforts to resolve the conflict have proven a failure.
“The war in Sudan has received a fraction of the attention given to Gaza and Ukraine, yet it threatens to be deadlier than either conflict,” said an analysis in the Economist. At the heart of the conflict is a power struggle between Sudan’s two most powerful military forces, the SAF (Sudan Armed Forces) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and paramilitary RSF (Rapid Support Forces) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. Both are actively fighting to prevent a transition to civilian rule in Sudan. The conflict has spread, unchecked, from Darfur in the west to the capital Khartoum. In spite of a recent report by a United Nations-mandated mission – denouncing both sides in Sudan’s civil war for abuses that may amount to war crimes — and its call for world powers to send in peacekeepers and widen an arms embargo to protect civilians, the prospect of ending violence is no where to be seen, at least not soon. Before April 2023, when a conflict broke out between the SAF and the RSF (formerly known as Janjaweed), unimaginable atrocities had already been committed in Darfur and other regions.
Between 2003 and 2008 the heavily-armed Arab Janjaweed militias had carried out murderous assaults on the non-Arab communities, with a resulting loss of life that was known as the first genocide of the 21st century. Now once again, civilians are trapped in a deadly conflict not of their own making: one which led to an all-out war that threatens Sudan’s fragile unity. While the warring parties were both involved in serious crimes, the RSF bears the most responsibility for systematically targeting civilians in Darfur on ethnic grounds.
The war in Sudan has created the largest displacement in the world—nearly eleven million people were forced to leave their homes. And it has left more than 18 million people facing acute food crisis, with over 730,000 children suffering from severe and acute malnutrition.
In addition, 78,000 children under the age of five are dying every year from preventable causes like malaria. Seventy to 80 per cent of hospitals and medical facilities are no longer functional. In February 2024, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) revealed that all emergency thresholds for malnutrition had been reached and that a child dies © UN Environment Programexterminate them. Yet the international community has failed to prioritize the increasingly alarming situation. If the Sudan atrocities were happening in Europe, the response would have been much different. For now, it’s been every two hours from malnutrition in Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons near El Fasher, the besieged capital of the North Darfur state.
In July, independent experts from the UN-accredited Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System (IPC) confirmed famine in Zamzam camp. It is only the third time in the last two decades that the UN has declared a full-scale famine. Food security specialists warn that as many as 2.5 million could die from hunger by the end of the year.
Since late August, a dozen trucks loaded with aid supplies have crossed from Chad to Dar fur via the Adré crossing at the Chad-Sudan border. However, to make things worse, the rainy season and floods not only destroy homes and shelters but also come with unavoidable diseases. In August, the Arba’at dam near Port Sudan suffered significant damage due to heavy rains. The dam’s collapse further exacerbated the humanitarian crisis— destroying 20 villages and causing substantial damage to the freshwater pipeline supplying Port Sudan. The people of Sudan are caught up between the hammer of war and As the war continues, Sudanese civilians continue to suffer mass displacement, human rights abuses, and man-made famine.
Despite immense evidence of atrocities, the international community’s tragic silence on the bloodshed enabled by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is disturbing. Credible reports, including from UN bodies, clearly established that the RSF and allied Arab militia have been targeting the ethnically non-Arab Massalit people with a clear intent to described as “ethnic cleansing” – a term that bears no legal meaning and is unlikely to generate any bold action to stop it.
It is absolutely clear that action to mitigate the suffering in Sudan is urgently needed. In 2023, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and leading experts on atrocities and Sudan sounded the alarm on the imminent risk of genocide in Dar fur and called upon the interna the anvil of natural disasters tional community to act to prevent and hold actors responsible to account.
This year, the Centre produced a landmark independent inquiry focusing on the ethnically motivated atrocities in Darfur. It was contributed to and endorsed by dozens of world-leading jurists and scholars, including founding prosecutors of the international criminal tribunals, former supreme courts justices, and presidents of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
The inquiry’s analysis used the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as a legal framework and identified the most responsible states and entities for breaches of the convention. Further, it applied standards of proof used by UN investigative missions, including clear and convincing evidence and reasonable grounds for belief. The inquiry reached five conclusions.
First, based on the evidence, the RSF and allied militia have committed and are committing genocide against the non-Arab Massalit people in West Darfur. Second, based on the first conclusion, and as the ICJ previously established, all 153 state parties babies…to change the non-Ar ab portion within the Sudanese blood.” These are the types of expressions preceding the commis sion of genocide.
RSF fighters deliberately targeted non-Arab African people and referred to them as Ambyat (a derogatory term used to describe non-Arab blacks) or Falangayat (SAF affiliates), falsely accusing non-Arab men, and coercing cap tured men to make animal sounds as a form humiliation and degra dation. In West Darfur, RSF fighters RSF from committing genocide. Fifth, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the RSF
and allied Arab militia are com mitting genocide against non-Arab populations other than the Massal it, mainly the Fur and Zaghawa in North Darfur.
Despite repeated international calls, the belligerents continue to display a shocking disregard for civilian lives and human dignity. In North Darfur, the RSF’s siege of El Fashir exposes civilians to more starvation and death. Many Camps-Coordination F.B. The international community has already failed the people of Darfur and is failing now. Information was made available in real time during the early 2000s genocide and is available now. The failure to act is inexcusable and perhaps deliberate — because we all knew then, and we know now.
Third, based on clear and convincing evidence, the RSF and its allied militia are responsible for direct and public incitement to genocide against the Massal it in West Darfur. The inquiry extensively details the direct and expressed, as well as implicit incitement — such as saying, “after we rape you, you will carry our directly called for the killing of the Massalit: “kill the Massalit,” or “kill the boys,” “slaves,” or “dirt,” to dehumanize the targeted group and make their killing a normal act and even blessed by God, according to the perpetrators.
Fourth, based on clear and convincing evidence, the UAE (bearing the greatest responsibility), Chad, the Central African Republic, Russia via the Wagner Group, and Sudan’s government are complicit in the genocide. Each of these states is complicit by providing the RSF with financial and military support, directly fueling the genocide, or failing to uphold their duty to prevent the are trapped with no possibility of fleeing. Both RSF and SAF, enabled by foreign actors, are using starvation as a weapon of war—actively hindering the delivery of human itarianaid, food, and life-saving emergency nutritional supplies from reaching people in need. The suffering is not limited to Darfur—many Sudanese across the country face similar conditions. But there are actions the inter national community could take.
They include: First, the UN Security Council, in coordination with the African Union (AU), should deploy peace keeping mission like the now-ex pired African Union-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (a.k.a UN AMID) to protect civilians in the besieged city of El Fasher and its surroundings. Further, the mission should include observers to monitor human rights abuses in areas controlled by the warring parties where civilians are either directly targeted by the RSF or indiscriminately bombed by SAF. The deliberate failure of the belligerents to adhere to international humanitarian laws and rules of engagement demands immediate deployment of a peacemaking mission to save lives and ensure unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance.
Second, the US and its international partners’ efforts to restore peace are commendable but insufficient to stop violence against civilians. It must, therefore, employ more punitive measures against the warring parties and their finan ciers. These include halting arms sales to powerful regional allies such as the UAE. Its continuous support of the RSF will only encourage SAF to seek alliances with malign actors like China, Iran, and Russia. While the impact of punitive measures is unpredictable, the international community’s current approach of threats without actions has only emboldened the belligerents.
Third, the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan and other credible reports have already established that the UAE and other actors are violating the UN arms embargo. Calling out the UAE will send other actors a warning and deterring message. It must be made clear to the UAE that there is a reputational risk associated with funding genocidaires.
Fourth, the International Criminal Court (ICC) must, without further delay, issue arrest warrants against senior commanders in volved in atrocities, including the genocide in West Darfur.
Additionally, the UN Security Council should expand the ICC’s mandate to cover atrocities in the whole of Sudan. In 2005, the Council issued resolution1593, referring the situation in Darfur to the ICC. It would be morally un justifiable for victims of the same abuses and same perpetrators not to get similar redress and justice simply because they live in two different regions within Sudan. Fifth, the African states should collectively take legal actions against actors undermining peace, stability, and the rule of law on the continent. This includes filing a case to the international Court of Justice against the UAE and other actors for breaches of international treaties, including the Genocide Convention, in Sudan. African states should lead rather than be led by others in addressing conflicts in their own continent.
Finally, Sudan’s history demonstrates that a peace process focusing on warring parties may lead to appeasement, but does not prevent further conflict, as a number of failed agreements between 1972 and 2023 attest.
A genuine peace process should include stakeholders, beyond warring parties, representing the broadest segments of society. Focusing on the warring parties alone will only create further distrust among the people and incentivize the excluded groups and minorities to pick up arms if they wish to protect their interests.
The crisis in Sudan is profound, and affects the regional and inter national community. Its resolution compels the AU and the international community to proactively engage—first and foremost by an aggressive adoption and enforcement of punitive measures against belligerents and their backers.
As tragic as it may be, the war in Sudan could serve as an opportunity to address the root causes of Sudan’s problems once and for all. It only requires courage and political will, which have been lacking so far. It is now up to the AU and the international community to place saving lives above their own geo political and economic interests
Mutasim Ali is Legal Advisor at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and Senior Juris Doctorate candidate at American University Washington College of Law. X: mutasimali3 | LinkedIn: mutasim-ali