On Friday the UN Human Rights Council convened an emergency meeting in response to the further worsening of Sudan’s catastrophic humanitarian crisis, specifically to the threat to the south-western, strategically important city of El Obeid, and to fears its encirclement by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) threatens “mass atrocities”. Last October the group was responsible for the deaths, torture and abuse of thousands when it took the city of el Fasher, a massacre described by the UN as akin to genocide.
Taking El Obeid would enable the RSF to consolidate its hold on western Sudan. In recent weeks, the group has used drones to target power and fuel stations, water treatment facilities, and bakeries, and cut off food supplies, leaving thousands without access to basic survival necessities.
The RSF took the capital Khartoum early in the country’s civil war but the rival Sudanese Armed Forces recaptured the city last year. Sudan is now divided in two, with the RSF controlling the west. Aid agencies and the UN consider the crisis in Sudan to be the world’s worst – it has forced 14 million from their homes and pushed more than 10 million into extreme food insecurity. Some estimates put the death toll as high as 400,000.
Appeals from the UN for states to stop supplying both armies have been ignored. The RSF has relied on covert supplies from the UAE. Turkey, Russia and Iran have supplied weapons to the Sudanese military, sometimes in exchange for gold.
RM Block
The UN meeting has asked the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan, established in October 2023 by the UN Human Rights Council, to conduct an urgent inquiry into alleged war crimes. A draft resolution condemns the deliberate use of starvation as a method of warfare, signalling potential referral to the International Criminal Court for prosecution.
The UN needs to restore its credibility by adopting a more muscular interventionist approach including, however difficult, an international military peace-enforcing mission and a debate about sanctioning countries fuelling the war.
