World must act now to halt ‘horrific atrocities’ in Sudan, UN says

The world must act immediately to halt the “horrific atrocities” in Sudan’s El-Fasher, the UN rights chief tells AFP, urging countries not to wait until a “genocide” is declared.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been at war with the regular army since April 2023, captured the last military stronghold in western Darfur on October 26. Since El-Fasher’s takeover after a gruelling 18-month siege, the United Nations and rights monitors have reported widespread atrocities, including ethnically driven killings and abductions.

“It’s clear that atrocity crimes are being committed as we speak,” UN Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk says, stressing that the siege has in itself been “an atrocity crime.”

“People were beleaguered and under siege, under horrific conditions, no food, hardly any water… We have reports of people having to eat animal feed, for example, eating peanut shells.”

Pointing to the declaration of famine in some parts, he says it was “so desperate… with children dying of starvation,”

Since the RSF swept in, Turk says his office has received “credible evidence of mass killing; that when people are trying to flee this horrible situation, they get shot at.”

“There are very serious reports of rape and sexual violence and gang rape, [and] we have very serious issues of killings of those who are supposedly collaborators,” he says.

The rights chief says there are fears that the atrocities unfolding in El-Fasher might be repeated in Sudan’s oil-rich Kordofan region. “I hope that the international community really wakes up,” he says, lamenting that “all the warnings that we have given over the whole year… were not heeded.”