By Olivia Cash
The Goz al-Haj camp, north of Khartoum, Sudan, 25 December 2024. Photograph: The Guardian
In April 2023, Sudan erupted into one of the deadliest civil wars of the 21st century. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have battled for control over the Darfur and Kordofan regions, leaving only four of the eighteen Sudanese states free from civil war by October 2024.
Civilians continue to bear the brunt of this war: murdered, sexually assaulted, displaced, and left to starve by both sides. LeMonde estimated in November 2024 that at least 150,000 civilians have died as a result of the war.
In Khartoum alone, over 61,000 people have been killed, 26,000 directly by the war. With 90% of deaths in Khartoum going unrecorded, experts believe death and casualty statistics to be severely underestimated across Sudan.
North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, has been a deathtrap for civilians since the RSF besieged the city in September 2024. At least 782 civilians have been killed by indiscriminate shelling and bombardment from both forces.
The RSF has committed ethnically targeted massacres of non-Arab groups, especially the Masalit ethnic group. A UN panel of experts on Sudan concluded that between 10,000 and 15,000 Masalit people were murdered by the RSF in El Geneina, West Darfur in 2023. Tens of thousands more Darfuri Sudanese have died since then.
Civilians have fled Sudan en masse. 2.9 million of Sudan’s 14.6 million displaced persons have sought refuge in neighbouring countries such as Chad and South Sudan. In refugee camps they face malnutrition and disease, due to lack of clean water and hygiene facilities. In a camp in Arkoum, Chad, ten children die from malnutrition every week. Lack of hygiene has caused a lethal cholera epidemic in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps across Sudan.
Rape, gang rape, and sex trafficking are rampant. Most such crimes are attributed to the RSF. In South Kordofan, girls as young as thirteen are kidnapped for sexual slavery by RSF soldiers, who use racial slurs while assaulting non-Arab victims.
A UN Fact Finding Mission reported that over 400 women sought medical aid for sexual violence in the year between April 2023 and July 2024. The real numbers of victims are likely much higher, as stigma prevents many women from reporting rapes. Many kidnapped women commit suicide to avoid being raped by RSF soldiers.
Both the SAF and RSF use starvation as a weapon of war. Since April 2023, 145 healthcare facilities have been looted and destroyed, resulting in 65% of the Darfuri population being deprived of even basic medical services.
The SAF and RSF block humanitarian assistance from reaching civilians. The Global Hunger Monitor released a famine alert for five areas in Sudan. At the UN, Burhan’s Sudanese government denied the famine. It barred all international and UN aid workers from Darfur in October 2024, claiming they violated “national sovereignty.” At least 22 aid workers have been killed.
Against the Masalit and other non-Arab ethnic groups, the RSF violate the following articles of the Genocide Convention:
Article II (a): Killing members of the group, (b): Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, (c): Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d): Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. This is Genocide.
Genocide Watch deems the war in Sudan to have escalated to stage nine of the genocidal process: Extermination.
Genocide Watch recommends:
The UN Security Council should create a Commission of Inquiry to report on crimes being committed in Sudan.
The UN Security Council should authorize reestablishment of a powerful UN/AU force to stop these crimes.
The African Union and UN should deploy 10,000 troops to re-establish their peacemaking mission in Sudan.
RSF and SAF leaders should be charged by the ICC and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Police should be deployed with the UN/AU Mission and be authorized to arrest those charged by the ICC.
The UN embargo on all funding and weapons shipments must be extended to all of Sudan.
Nations that violate this embargo, such as the UAE, should be heavily and effectively sanctioned.
An immediate ceasefire must be demanded by the UN, AU, Arab League, OIC, and NATO.