International Rescue Committee

 

"Even before the war in Sudan erupted in April 2023, the country was already experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis that left 15.8 million people in need of aid. Now, three years of war have drastically worsened these conditions, displacing approximately 14 million people and leaving 33.7 million people—two-thirds of the population—in need of humanitarian support."

"The country’s food system has been pushed to the brink, with millions of families now surviving on just one meal a day, or less."

"Sudan is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world in terms of number of people who need humanitarian aid. It is also the largest and fastest displacement crisis."
International Rescue Committee 

 

As Sudan marks three years of war, MSF teams continue to treat people whose lives have been devastated by the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

A lack of basic services and constrained humanitarian access are compounding people's suffering.

The warring parties must protect civilians and be held accountable for their violations, and the international community must use diplomatic pressure to prevent further crimes. 

Medicins Sans Frontieres  

Patient Saidal Altaher, 2 months old, being treated for malnutrition at the pediatric hospital stabilization center in Port Sudan on Wednesday.  Bernat Armangue / AP

 

Described as the world's largest humanitarian challenge in terms of displacement and hunger, Sudan is suffering a crisis of abandonment with the world's attention turning to the Middle East and the standoff in Iran, and its blockade of the Hormuz Strait. In Sudan, 13 million people have been forced by the threat and violence of a bloody conflict to flee their homes, becoming internally displaced. Food and medicines are scarce and diseases like cholera are running rampant. 

 

The number of  dead from the conflict stands at 59,000 with 6,000 having perished over three days alone, as the RSF (paramilitary Rapid Support Forces) bulled their way through the Darfur outpost of el-Fasher in October, an offensive that the UN considers alike "the defining characteristics of genocide". Black Darfurians once again in the rifle sights of the horsed Arab Janjaweed as they were in the early 2000s.

 

Severe acute malnutrition is set to afflict 800,000 people in parts of Sudan, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Two of every three Sudanese require assistance, according to the United Nations. Health facilities have been impacted to the point where only 63 percent remain fully or partially functional to deal with the conflict's wounded and emerging disease outbreaks. 

 

Denise Brown, the UN's top official in Sudan, criticizing the international community for its failure to press for the end to the conflict, stating: "A plea from me: Please don't call this the forgotten crisis. I'm referring to this as an abandoned crisis", she corrected. 

 

People fleeing conflict in Sudan's Darfur risked being hit by drone strikes   Reuters

 

Following the deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, a power struggle emerged between the Sudanese military under General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and RSF commander General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who was initially Burhan's deputy at the ruling sovereign council of Sudan. Sudanese "have become powerless and are subjected to foreign dictates", claimed a Sudanese journalist and researcher.

 

Germany undertook to host a  conference in Berlin, welcoming governments, UN agencies and aid groups to take part, with a goal to rally donors to assist in funding strained humanitarian responses and to "promote an immediate ceasefire", according to the German Development Ministry. For its troubles, the Khartoum government condemned the conference as an 'unacceptable' interference on Sudan's internal affairs. 

 

The Sudanese military has control over the country's north, east and central regions, its oil refineries and pipelines, and Red Sea ports. The RSF and its allies control Darfur and the region at the border with South Sudan. Regions that both include oilfields and gold mines. Egypt supports the Sudan military, and the United Arab Emirates has been accused by the UN of providing arms to the RSF, which it emphatically denies. 

 

In the three years of conflict, widespread atrocities are known to have occurred;  rampant sexual violence in gang rapes and mass killings, among them. According to the WHO, hospitals, ambulances and medical workers have been attacked, claiming over 2,000 have been killed.  Most atrocities have been placed at the feet of the RSF and the Janjaweed, notorious for atrocities committed in the early 2000s against Black Sudanese farming communities. 

 

Sudanese army soldiers sitting atop a parked tank after their capture of a base used by the RSF, after the rival paramilitary group evacuated from the Salha area of Omdurman, the twin city of Sudan's capital, in May 2025.  Ebrahim Hamid / AFP via Getty Images

 

War Crimes in Civil War-Ravaged Sudan

 

"[I am] deeply alarmed [by reports of civilian casualties and forced displacement from El-Fasher]."

"With fighters pushing further into the city and escape routes cut off, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped and terrified — shelled, starving and without access to food, health care or safety."

"[There is a dire need for an] immediate ceasefire [throughout the region]."

"[The UN has life-saving supplies ready, but due to the intensified attacks in the region, it has made it impossible for workers to get aid in]."

"Safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access must be allowed to reach all civilians in need."

Tom Fletcher, emergency relief co-ordinator, United Nations

 

"Our liberation of [El Fasher] is the liberation of Sudan, all the way to Port Sudan...."

"We are coming and we are coming heavy." 

"The new Sudan goes forward, the old Sudan gets destroyed."

RSF second-in-command Abdelrahim Dagalo 

 

"[The Rapid Support Forces [RSF] committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians in the city of El-Fasher, where more than 2,000 unarmed citizens were executed and killed on October 26 and 27, most of them women, children and the elderly."

Joint Forces, allies of the Sudanese military  

Camp for displaced families who fled from al-Fashir to Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan. Photograph: Mohammed Jamal/Reuters

 

Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al Burham stated his forces had withdrawn from El-Fasher "to a safer location". In so doing, he acknowledged that his defense operations had lost the battle for the strategic city, leaving the Rapid Support Forces now in full control of all of Darfur. Even so, he made a pledge to continue to fight "until this land is purified". Despite which, analysts conclude that Sudan has now been partitioned along an east-west axis. The RSF has set up a parallel government from a territory that will prove extremely difficult for the military to extract them. 

 

This is a bloody civil war, with the RSF, formerly in partnership with the Sudanese army, since April of 2023 challenging the Sudanese government for total control of Darfur. Formerly known as the Janjaweed, horsed Arab militia in conjunction with the previous government of Omar al-Bashir who was found by the ICC to have been guilty of war crimes in Darfur, the power struggle between the two forces led to their violent separation and the challenge that followed. Since then, over 150,000 people have been killed, with over 14 million displaced in the fighting.  

"The shelling was so intense on Saturday that we had no choice but to flee El-Fashir."

"Along the way, the RSF filmed us and we were beaten and insulted - and they stole what we had on the journey."

"A number of people were captured and ransoms were demanded for their release. Some of those who were taken were later executed."

"During the journey, many people were arrested, and we suffered greatly from hunger and thirst."

Displaced Darfurian  

People arriving in Tawila have been describing the extreme violence they faced as they fled el-Fasher. AFP/Getty Images

 

 Ethnically-motivated atrocities in the western Sudanese city of El-Fasher have been reported since it fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, concluding the years-long siege that made life an utter misery for those city dwellers who were unable to flee, with the city surrounded by RSF forces. Over 18 months of siege warfare had created fear and threats of starvation for those forced to remain in the city, trapping 260,000 people without external aid being able to reach them. 

 

The Rapid Support Forces now has control over every state capital in the sprawling Darfur region comprised of mostly non-Arab, Black farming communities. NGOs, along with local groups had given warning that mass atrocities would be triggered by El-Fasher's fall to the RSF and those predictions are ringing true. Open-source intelligence and satellite imagery have confirmed the dire state of affairs now reigning for the residents of the city. 

 

According to Volker Turk, UN rights chief, there is a growing risk of "ethnically motivated violations and atrocities", as his office was "receiving multiple, alarming reports that the Rapid Support Forces are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions". According to pro-democracy activists, El-Fasher residents endured "the worst forms of violence and ethnic cleansing" since control of the area was claimed by the RSF.

 

A fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas was shown in a video released by local activists shooting a group of unarmed civilians seated on the ground. They were killed at point-blank range. As many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina have been reported to be killed by the paramilitaries, with their track record of atrocities. The Sudanese army itself has also been accused of war crimes.

 

The paramilitary RSF Forces have taken over el-Fasher prompting fears of the lives of thousands of civilians   Image: UNICEF/Xinhua/IMAGO

 

 El-Fasher was considered to represent one of he grimmest places in war-torn Sudan -- thanks to a war labelled by the UN as among the world's worst humanitarian crises. Located outside the city, displacement camps were declared to be in famine. Within El-Fasher, the quarter-million population in desperation turned to eating animal feed to stay alive.  

"[The city] appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution."

"[This includes what appears to be] door-to-door clearance operations."

Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab 

 

 

"[The crisis is] the final stage of the Darfur genocide."

"I have seen videos of ditches and trenches entirely full of friends, neighbours and family members’ bodies."

"There have been reports of entire families hanging from trees."

Emi Mahmoud, Darfur Internally Displaced People Network  

 

 

"Here in El Fasher, we are starving."

"The responsibility is not just on those holding the guns. It's on the world. The Arab countries. The African Union. Europe." 

"The so-called international community. All of them."

"We know they can help. We know they have the power to airdrop food. They have planes. They have supplies."

"But they are choosing not to."

Abaaz Sudan Dispatch quoting Sudanese civilian

 

"[The U.S.’ determination of genocide in Sudan is] long overdue [and should have happened sooner]."

"[Nonetheless, it is] a form of justice because it recognizes victims’ grievances."

"It is a step towards peace and accountability by paving the way to hold actors responsible to account, not only perpetrators themselves but actors complicit in genocide."

Sudanese lawyer Mutasim Ali, legal adviser, Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

 

"We don’t think that the scale of these atrocities happening in Sudan and Darfur would have been this big without the support of the UAE [United Arab Emirates] to the RSF [paramilitary Rapid Support Forces]."

"So, we hope that the US decision to sanction Hemedti will send a strong message to the UAE to rethink its position and engage in a serious political process to end these atrocities and genocidal acts happening across the country."

"The RSF has been completely emboldened by impunity, a lack of accountability, and the fact that they were not seriously subjected to any sort of accountability."

Sudanese activist Hala Al-Karib, head, regional arm, Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa 

 Smoke rises above buildings after aerial bombardment during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese military in Khartoum, Sudan. Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

 

 

The RSF's  Hemedti

"[Hemedti’s RSF and its allied Arab militias had perpetrated] direct attacks against civilians [including the systematic murder of] men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis."

"[They also] deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. [The same forces] targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies."

"Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan."

"To the foreign sponsors sending drones, missiles, mercenaries – enough. To those profiting off the illicit oil and gold trade that fund this conflict – enough."

Biden Administration U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken

 

"The UAE has made absolutely clear that it is not providing any support or supplies to any of the two belligerent warring parties in Sudan."

"Our primary focus remains on addressing the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Sudan."

"We continue to call for an immediate ceasefire and a peaceful resolution to this man-made conflict."

United Arab Emirates Foreign Ministry  

According to the United States there is an actual genocide taking place in Sudan, one that the world largely overlooks. Yet Sudan represents the world's worst humanitarian crisis where last year famine was officially declared, with the United Nations reporting that 25 million Sudanese face extreme hunger, with up to 12 million having been forced to flee their homes, in the midst of a brutal civil war. The death toll after years of conflict, according to the U.S. special envoy Tom Perriello, appears to have exceeded 400,000. 

 

Back in January before the change of administration, there was an official declaration naming the killing in Sudan as a genocide, and in April the Trump administration as well characterized the ongoing slaughter as a genocide. A determination echoed by the U.S. State Department. Bipartisan agreement has been reached in the United States affirming that Sudan is suffering through both genocide and famine. Despite which there is no consensus opinion over what official reaction or intervention might take shape. 

 

Somewhat reminiscent of the years of civil conflict in Syria when President Bashar al Assad, faced by a  rebellion from Sunni Syrians fed up with being treated like second-class citizens by the ruling Alawites, brooked no dissent of his rule, and set out to destroy his detractors by turning a protest into a civil war, attacking his own Sunni population with all the conceivable weaponry at his disposal, including chemical warfare and barrel bombs along with support from Iran's Republican Guards and Russian air offence. There too, a figure of 400,000 killed and millions internally displaced, millions more refugees, took place.  

 

A woman and baby are seen at the Zamzam displacement camp, close to El Fasher in North Darfur, Sudan.  Mohamed Zakaria/MSF/Reuters

 

While the world community has its condemnatory gaze fixed on Gaza, where charges of genocide and starvation are rife yet faces plausible deniability by Israel, in a conflict where it is a common ploy for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas to shelter behind the civilian population, deliberately placing civilians in the direct line of conflict with a defining purpose to use figures of large numbers of civilians becoming casualties to flay the conscience of the West with the charge of Palestinian victimhood at the armed hands of the Israeli 'occupation', that same world community is utterly disinterested in a real genocide and famine taking place in Africa.

 

In Sudan, survivors speak of ethnic cleansing of immense savagery. In a village on the Sudan-Chad border, an Arab militia ordered men and boys over age 10 to line up and a massacre took place, after which the women and girls were raped. Light-skinned Arabs targeting Black African ethnic groups; as one militia leader stated: "We don't want to see any Black people". These massacres reflect what happened in Darfur, Sudan, when the Sudanese government empowered Arab horsed tribesmen called the Janjaweed to hunt down and kill Darfurian farmers. That same Janjaweed has been transformed into the Rapid Support Forces.

 

For the past two years the Sudanese Armed Forces has been at war with the Rapid Support Forces militia, where both are responsible for starving civilians and impeding humanitarian attempts to give aid and comfort to the starving Sudanese. And although both sides are believed to have committed war crimes, it is the Rapid Support Forces who are responsible for the worst horrors visited  upon their ethnic targets, burning entire villages and slaughtering and raping civilians.

 

Despite their denials, the United Arab Emirates appear as the major supporter of the Rapid Support Forces by underwriting its atrocities. The Biden/Trump administration have held back on holding the Emirates responsibly accountable, yet there are some in the U.S. Congress who support a ban on arms transfers to the Emirates as long as it continues to enable rape and murder of civilians.   

"The RSF and RSF-aligned militias have continued to direct attacks against civilians. The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence."

"Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies. Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan."

"The United States is committed to holding accountable those responsible for these atrocities. We are today sanctioning RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, for his role in systematic atrocities committed against the Sudanese people."

"We are also sanctioning seven RSF-owned companies located in the United Arab Emirates and one individual for their roles in procuring weapons for the RSF."

Then-U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken  

Sudanese soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces unit stand on their vehicle during a military-backed rally south of Khartoum, Sudan. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP

 

 

Atrocity Alert: Sudan's Darfur Attacks Redux

"All under the false pretext of targeting rebels [government forces and Janjaweed militias began attacking non-Arab villages, burning entire villages, engaging in systematic killings, extensive rape and sexual violence]."

"These attacks were also designed to destroy these groups' [Ethnic Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa communities] means of survival and essential infrastructure."

"[The 153 states that have signed the Geneva Convention must] take immediate action to end any complicity in the form of support for the RSF [Rapid Support Forces] and use all means reasonable available to prevent and halt the genocide."

Report, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

Families escaping Ardamata in West Darfur cross into Adre, Chad, after a wave of ethnic violence, November 7, 2023. Survivors recounted executions and looting in Ardamata, which they said were carried out by RSF and allied Arab militias. 2023 REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig

In Darfur, Sudan, 80 different tribes and ethnic groups live traditional lives as farmers and pastoralists. In the last number of decades, tensions have strained the non-Arab farming communities' relations between Arab herders. Land is at a premium, leaving the farmers and the herders at odds between grazing cattle and farming the land. Government bodies appointed by the Sudanese government in the mid-1980s favoured the rights of the Arab communities, leading to mass violence, when Arab herders attacked non-Arab, Black farming communities.

Primary groups targeted by the current situation, with the rebirth of mass killings, displacement, rape and land grabs are the Masalit, Fur, Zaghawa, Bargo, Tunjor and other non-Arab tribes in the West, South, North East, and Central Darfur States. Eventually non-Arab groups -- Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa -- responded by forming their own militias, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, both labelled rebels by the government of Sudan. 

In the late 1980s and beyond fighting between the Arab and non-Arab communities intensified. Chaos reigned when President Omar al-Bashi aligned the country's military with the Janjaweed militia (Arab horsemen) who persecuted and conducted murderous raids on Darfur's farming communities. Between 2003 and 2005, 300,000 people were murdered and countless others were made homeless."Counter-insurgency" campaigns resulted between 2015 and 2016. By 2019 President Omar al-Bashir was overthrown after having been indicted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

The feared and hated Janjaweed since transformed into the Rapid Support Forces, now in conflict with the Sudanese Armed Forces in a power struggle. The conflict, seemingly ignored by a world bored with constant African Continent strife has caused 17.7 million people to face food insecurity, while another 25 million are left in need of humanitarian assistance. In a city in West Darfur, El Geneina, the RSF rounded up Masalit men for execution, where they were held in detention without food or water.

According to the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on the Sudan, between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in that attack. The Darfur Bar Association described the situation in El Geneina as a "full-scale genocide". The Raoul Wallenberg Centre report cited genocidal and dehumanizing language: Arab militiamen killing boys as young as six months, claiming "the boys will grow up and they will kill us. ... so we must destroy them now".

 

Bodies are strewn near houses in the West Darfur capital El Geneina, June 16, 2023. Up to 15,000 people were killed in the city last year in ethnic violence, according to a United Nations report seen by Reuters