Amid the alarming humanitarian situation in Sudan, the UN Security Council on Thursday demanded that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) end their siege of the North Darfur capital, El Fasher, as they move to take the last remaining town in the Western Darfur region from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Meanwhile, the humanitarian emergency remains severely underfunded, despite the United States pledging US$315 million in additional funding to Sudan on Friday.
The Security Council adopted a British-drafted resolution by a vote of 14-0. Russia abstained. Resolution 2736 (2024) also calls for de-escalation in and around the city, where more than 800,000 civilians are sheltering, many of them displaced from other parts of Darfur that have fallen to the paramilitary group.
Sudan has witnessed shocking levels of violence since fighting broke out on April 15, 2023, sparked by a power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander of the SAF, and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the RSF, also known as "Hemedti," plunging the country into the world's largest humanitarian crisis.
The situation in El Fasher is particularly dire, with indiscriminate shelling, the use of heavy artillery, and targeted attacks on civilian neighborhoods, camps for internally displaced persons, and civilian infrastructure. The RSF have surrounded the city, burning and looting nearby communities. They have advanced on the city, where an SAF infantry division is outnumbered and surrounded.
“This Council has sent a strong signal to the parties to the conflict today,” British Ambassador Barbara Woodward said Thursday. “This brutal and unjust conflict needs to end.”
As of Saturday, it remained unclear whether the warring parties would heed the council's demands. An earlier resolution in March calling for a ceasefire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was ignored.
The Council also requested the Secretary-General to make further recommendations for the protection of civilians in Sudan, in consultation with the Sudanese authorities and regional stakeholders, and encouraged the coordinated engagement of its Personal Envoy for Sudan, Ramtane Lamamra, with the African Union, the League of Arab States and other key regional actors to advance peace in the country.
The situation in the capital of North Darfur escalated on 10 May when clashes broke out in El Fasher between the SAF, who are in the city, and RSF, who attacked surrounding towns before entering the state capital. Thousands of people have since attempted to flee, and humanitarian workers report hundreds of civilian casualties.
Sudan's deputy UN ambassador said El Fasher was facing "great and unprecedented dangers," and he urged the Council to hold external actors responsible for fueling the conflict.
“The support by some countries to these militias directly contributes to the continuation of violence and destruction in the Sudan,” Ammar Mohammed said.
“And we name here the official and regional sponsor of the criminal militias — namely the United Arab Emirates — whose support and weaponry leads to entrenching the suffering and misery of civilians in the Sudan.”
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has repeatedly denied sending arms to the RSF. But a report by a UN panel of experts earlier this year said there was substance to media reports that cargo planes from the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, had landed in eastern Chad with weapons, ammunition and medical equipment destined for the RSF.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation grows more dire by the day. The United Nations warns that 5 million Sudanese are on the brink of famine, including hundreds of thousands in the Darfur region.
The head of Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been tracking action on the ground in Sudan for months using satellite and other technology, told reporters on a conference call Thursday that an SAF defeat in El Fasher could be imminent.
“We are talking hours and days before the potential fall of El Fasher,” Nathaniel Raymond said. “And we are talking about a Sudanese Armed Forces contingent — the 6th Infantry Division — that we can assess is clearly outnumbered and surrounded by RSF, who are gaining ground … from multiple directions inside El Fasher city.”
He said the lab has also observed growing damage in and around El Fasher over the past 10 days, equivalent to the size of more than 200 football fields. This includes signs of significant looting at the town's last remaining hospital. People are also on the move in large numbers.
The United Nations and others fear that a full-scale battle for El Fasher could unleash atrocities similar to the genocide carried out by Arab Janjaweed fighters against African Zaghawa, Masalit, Fur and other non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur in the early 2000s. Janjaweed fighters make up elements of today's RSF.
The medical humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders, MSF) said on Friday that only one surgical hospital was still functioning in El Fasher since the South Hospital was completely shut down on June 8 after being attacked and looted by the RSF. Of the three main hospitals in El Fasher, only the Saudi hospital remains operational.
MSF said in a statement that thousands of people are fleeing in search of safety, with many arriving at Zamzam camp, where there is an acute malnutrition crisis. At the Zamzam displacement camp, already home to an estimated 300,000 people, MSF has been responding to the catastrophic malnutrition situation, providing care through two clinics and a field hospital.
Both RSF and SAF were added to the UN's annual list of shame, published on Thursday, for committing grave violations against children in 2023. They were blacklisted for killing and maiming children, attacking schools and hospitals, and, in the case of the RSF, for sexual violence and the recruitment and use of children in their ranks.
On Friday, the United States announced more than US$315 million in additional humanitarian aid for Sudan, where 14 months of war between two rival generals has left nearly 25 million people in need of assistance.
“This is the single largest humanitarian crisis on the planet,” Samantha Power, the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), told reporters on a conference call announcing the funding.
Power expressed concern that the situation could be as bad as or worse than the 2011 drought-induced famine in Somalia that killed around 250,000 people, half of them children.
“The most worrying scenario would be that Sudan would become the deadliest famine since Ethiopia in the early 1980s,” she added.
Around 1 million Ethiopians perished over a two-year period in that historic famine. Millions more were displaced, and hundreds of thousands left Ethiopia.
Power said the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces are actively blocking aid deliveries.
“The point to stress here is that instead of supporting this life saving work by humanitarians and by Sudanese volunteers, the RSF and the SAF are actively thwarting it, in complete contradiction and opposition to their public commitments,” she said.
“It is obstruction, not insufficient stocks of food, that is the driving force behind the historic and deadly level of starvation in Sudan,” Power added. “That has to change immediately.”
Power said Washington is concerned about what will happen to civilians in El Fasher, especially to ethnically non-Arab communities, if the town falls to the RSF.
“Clearly the RSF is on the march,” she said. “And where the RSF has gone in the Darfur area historically, and this conflict, mass atrocities have followed.”
Of the 25 million Sudanese in need of humanitarian aid and protection, the United Nations says 18 million are facing acute hunger, and that number is likely to rise with the start of the lean season this month. Parts of Sudan are also facing famine as a result of the 14-month war.
UN Secretary-General AntĂłnio Guterres has repeatedly expressed concern about the fighting in El Fasher and across Sudan, saying a ceasefire is urgently needed to alleviate civilian suffering.
The UN has been calling for months for both cross-border access from Chad and access across the front lines of the conflict. It has also urged the authorities to remove administrative barriers, including delays in travel permits for aid convoys. Access restrictions have made it nearly impossible for humanitarian supplies to reach parts of Darfur and Khartoum.
In its resolution on Thursday, the Security Council demanded that the parties ensure the protection of civilians and facilitate rapid, safe and unhindered access for humanitarian assistance, including the reopening of a critical border crossing from Chad into Darfur for use by the UN. The Adre border crossing with Chad remains officially closed, leaving only the Tine crossing in North Darfur.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said Friday that a convoy carrying aid for some 160,000 people crossed into Darfur from Chad this week. It is only the third convoy to enter Sudan from Chad through the Tine border crossing in the past two months. The aid it carries is destined for people in Central, East and West Darfur.
As of June 2024, more than 10.3 million women, men and children have been internally displaced by conflict in the country, making Sudan the largest internal displacement crisis in the world. The total number of Sudanese refugees is estimated at more than 2.8 million, including those forced to flee before April 2023. In total, some 13 million people have now been displaced by conflict in Sudan, making it one of the two largest displacement crises in the world, alongside the war in Syria.
The war between the SAF and the RSF is being conducted with new levels of violence and brutality against civilians, especially in the states of Darfur. The RSF has been accused of mass killings and rape as a means of warfare. However, both parties to the conflict have been accused of serious war crimes.
Thousands are being ethnically targeted, killed, injured, abused and exploited, forcing more and more people to flee the violence. Gender-based violence (GBV), including sexual violence, is being used as a tool of war and is no longer concentrated in Khartoum or Darfur, but has spread to other parts of the country.
As the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate, funding to meet needs throughout Sudan and in neighboring countries is woefully inadequate. As of June 15, only 16 percent of the US$2.6 billion needed under the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) to provide life-saving assistance to more than 18 million people inside Sudan has been received.
Some information for this report provided by VOA.
Further information
Full text: UN Security Council Resolution 2736 (2024), adopted on June 13, 2024
https://undocs.org/S/RES/2736(2024)
Full text: One by one, hospitals are damaged and closed in El Fasher as fighting rages, Médecins Sans Frontières, press release, published June 14, 2024
https://www.msf.org/one-one-hospitals-are-damaged-and-closed-el-fasher-sudan
Full text: Administrator Samantha Power and Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a Press Availability on Sudan, United States Agency for International Development, Transcript of press encounter, published June 14, 2024
https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/speeches/jun-14-2024-administrator-samantha-power-and-ambassador-united-nations-linda-thomas-greenfield-press-availability-sudan