A dozen independent United Nations experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, expressed alarm Thursday about the escalation of violence in Sudan, particularly sexual violence committed in the conflict, primarily by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In a statement, they said gender-based violence (GBV), including sexual violence, is used as a tool of war and no longer concentrated in Khartoum or Darfur, but has spread to other parts of the country, such as Kordofan.
Since fighting first broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary RSF on April 15, more than 12,000 people have been killed, according to conservative estimates. More than 6.5 million people have been forcibly displaced inside and outside the country. Gender-based violence has been a constant pattern since the beginning of the conflict.
“We are appalled by reports of widespread use of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, as a tool of war to subjugate, terrorize, break and punish women and girls, and as a means of punishing specific communities targeted by the RSF and allied militias,” the experts said.
The UN experts noted that similar gender-based violence has also been used against non-Sudanese migrants, refugees and stateless persons.
In August 2023, the experts raised concerns at reports of multiple serious violations perpetrated in particular by the RSF. This included reports of sexual exploitation, slavery, trafficking, rape, and acts tantamount to enforced disappearances, which in some cases may have been racially, ethnically and politically motivated, including for expressing opposition to the presence of armed groups in an area.
Since then, reports of forced prostitution and forced marriage of women and girls have also emerged.
“These serious acts are reportedly no longer concentrated in Khartoum or Darfur, but have spread to other parts of the country, such as Kordofan,” the UN experts said.
The independent experts are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN human rights system, is the name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms.
Special Procedures mandate-holders are independent human rights experts appointed by the HRC to address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Independent experts are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.
The UN experts called Thursday on the international fact-finding mission for Sudan to investigate these human rights violations and crimes with a view to ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable.
“We urge the warring parties to cooperate fully with the fact-finding mission and its investigations,” the experts said.
Responding to the human rights and humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Sudan, the HRC on October 11, 2023, decided to establish an independent international fact-finding mission for Sudan to investigate and establish the facts, circumstances and root causes of all alleged human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, including those committed against refugees, and related crimes in the context of the ongoing armed conflict.
However, the international fact-finding mission has yet to be staffed.
The experts expressed dismay that despite initial assurances from the RSF that all forms of violence, including gender-based violence attributed to it, would be investigated impartially, acts of violence had continued unabated. These include attacks on camps and neighborhoods where internally displaced persons (IDPs) reside, in which the RSF and allied militias have reportedly looted property, tortured, and summarily executed displaced Sudanese.
“The RSF has failed to demonstrate its commitment to address these abhorrent atrocities by their forces and those associated with them,” the statement said.
The RSF militia collaborated with the Sudanese armed forces until the outbreak of war in April 2023. It emerged from the notorious Janjaweed militia that operated in Darfur in the 2000s, committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The scale and seriousness of violence perpetrated against women and girls are also grossly underreported, as many survivors cannot come forward out of fear of reprisals and stigma, the experts said.
According to the Combating Violence Against Women Unit (CVAW) of Sudan, documented cases of rape and sexual violence likely represent approximately 2 percent of actual numbers.
“We are gravely concerned at the inability of victims of violence and sexual exploitation to receive the attention and care that they need, due to insecurity and lack of access of humanitarian and relief actors to the affected areas,” the UN experts said.
The experts warned that victims and survivors of such crimes, in particular children, may suffer long-lasting traumatic impacts on their physical, mental, and sexual health and development. Their access to adequate support services must be ensured, as well as access to gender-sensitive reparations for the harm and violations suffered.
“The world must not turn a blind eye to the atrocities and large-scale sexual violence unfolding in Sudan,” the experts said.
“The international community must send a strong and clear message to parties to the conflict that they will be held accountable for their actions and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law,” they said.
On Sunday, the international human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report stating that the Rapid Support Forces and their allied militias killed hundreds of civilians in West Darfur in early November 2023.
HRW noted that based on interviews with survivors arriving in Chad, the death toll could be estimated between 1,300 and 2,000.
The rights group said that the UN Security Council should respond to the ethnically targeted mass killings and urgently consider ways to strengthen the UN’s presence in Sudan that could deter further atrocities and better protect civilians in Darfur. The Council should support monitoring of human rights abuses there and expand the existing arms embargo to cover the entire country and all parties to the ongoing armed conflict, HRW said.
“The Rapid Support Forces’ latest episode of ethnically targeted killings in West Darfur, has the hallmarks of an organized campaign of atrocities against Massalit civilians,” said Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“The UN Security Council needs to stop ignoring the desperate need to protect Darfur civilians.”
On Friday, however, the Security Council decided to end the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Transitional Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) and begin winding down its operations, which are scheduled to last three months and end in February 2024.
The scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Sudan is unprecedented. The UN says the country is experiencing a “humanitarian crisis of epic proportions”. Millions of people – especially in Khartoum, Darfur and Kordofan – lack access to protection, food, water, shelter, electricity, education, and health care.
The number of people in need of humanitarian aid stands now at 24.7 million people – more than half of Sudan’s population. Among them are more than 13 million children in urgent need of lifesaving humanitarian support.
The civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces is being waged with a new level of violence and brutality against civilians, especially in the states of Darfur. Thousands are ethnically targeted, killed, injured, abused, and exploited, forcing more and more people to flee the violence.
Since the conflict in Sudan started more than seven months ago, some 6.6 million people have become displaced. More than 5.3 million people – Sudanese and refugees already residing in the country - have been displaced inside Sudan, while 1.3 million women, men, and children have fled to neighboring countries, including Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Central African Republic.
Nearly 90 percent of people who have fled the violence are women and children. Most people that crossed borders into neighboring countries have sought refuge in Chad.
Further information
Full text: Sudan: UN experts appalled by use of sexual violence as a tool of war, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, press release, published November 30, 2023
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/sudan-un-experts-appalled-use-sexual-violence-tool-war
Full text: Security Council Terminates Mandate of UN Transition Mission in Sudan, Adopting Resolution 2715 (2023) in Vote of 14 in Favour to 1 Abstention, UN Security Council, press release, published December 1, 2023
https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15512.doc.htm
Website: Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, United Nations Human Rights Council
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/ffm-sudan/index
Full text: Sudan: New Mass Ethnic Killings, Pillage in Darfur, Human Rights Watch (HRW), report, released November 26, 2023
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/27/sudan-new-mass-ethnic-killings-pillage-darfur