The United States government this week labelled the actions of Sudan's paramilitary forces as genocide and imposed sanctions on its leader for the "horrific, systematic atrocities" committed by his forces in a war that has gripped Sudan for nearly two years, killing tens of thousands of people and driving more than 12 million from their homes. Yet at the same time, the US administration denies that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are being committed in the Gaza Strip.
While the sanctions have been welcomed by many observers, the continued denial by the US of most grave international crimes committed in another part of the world, the Middle East, this time by its ally Israel, raises the most serious questions. Genocide is widely regarded as one of the most serious international crimes, alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.
On April 15, 2023, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a brutal conflict that has resulted in the world's largest humanitarian emergency. The United Nations estimates that 30 million people - two-thirds of Sudan's population - are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Twenty months into the war in Sudan, the country continues to slide into a deepening famine characterized by widespread hunger and a significant increase in acute malnutrition. In December, the IPC Famine Review Committee (FRC) identified famine in at least five areas, four months after famine was first confirmed in the Zamzam camp for displaced people in Sudan's North Darfur state.
With half of the population facing high levels of acute food insecurity, Sudan is currently the world's largest hunger crisis. More than 24.6 million people across Sudan are now experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or worse.) This includes 8.1 million people in emergency (IPC Phase 4) and at least 638,000 people in IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe).
Sudan has witnessed shocking levels of violence since fighting broke out in April 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 devastating humanitarian crisis.
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 in particular 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 and crimes against humanity.
Thousands have been and continue to be 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.
In May 2024, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide warned that Sudan was showing all the signs of being at risk of genocide and that genocide may already have occurred.
At least thousands of people have been killed in mass atrocities in the capital of Sudan's West Darfur State, El Geneina. According to a UN report, as many as 15,000 people were killed in ethnically motivated violence in the town alone between April and June 2023.
US genocide declaration on Sudan
After months of deliberation, the US government on Tuesday formally declared that Sudan's Rapid Support Forces are committing genocide in Darfur during the current conflict in Sudan. The declaration comes belatedly, a year and a half after the first reports of ethnically targeted mass killing surfaced.
“The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys—even infants—on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a statement.
“Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies. Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan.”
USAID Administrator Samantha Power said in a separate statement, that the “US government used extensive documentary evidence in making this genocide determination, including eyewitness accounts, photographs, investigative work by relentless journalists, and videos by members of the RSF themselves,”
In connection with the genocide designation, the US government sanctioned RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo Mousa for his role in fueling the war in Sudan, and sanctioned seven RSF-owned companies based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for their role in procuring weapons and providing other material support to the RSF.
The international rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has welcomed the sanctions as “positive step”, noting that the Rapid Support Forces have carried out widespread war crimes and crimes against humanity across Sudan.
US double standards on genocide declaration
The United States, however, practices a double standard. Despite strong and growing evidence that Israeli government and military officials are responsible for committing genocide in Gaza, it has failed to declare this to be the case. Instead, US officials continue to deny it and provide political and military support to the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Speaking to journalists on Saturday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there was “no basis for accusations of genocide against — against Israel. That’s not a word that ought to be thrown around lightly. And we certainly don’t believe that it applies here.”
Israel's war in Gaza has been characterized by serious war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israeli security forces. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the situation in Gaza. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November.
A growing number of independent legal experts and international organizations - including the world's most prominent human rights group, Amnesty International - have found that Israel's actions in Gaza against Palestinians as a group amount to genocide.
US-based Human Rights Watch has found that Israeli authorities have deliberately inflicted living conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the population in the Gaza Strip by deliberately depriving Palestinian civilians there of adequate access to water, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths.
“In doing so, Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide,” HRW said in a recent report, stressing that the pattern of behavior, along with statements suggesting that some Israeli officials wanted to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, could amount to the crime of genocide.
At the same time, the Israeli government is receiving political, financial and military support from the US government. Senior officials in the Biden administration, including Blinken, President Joe Biden, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, are implicated, either by their actions or their failures to act, in ongoing atrocities by the Israeli army in Gaza and other actions by Israeli authorities that may amount to genocide.
The United States has been a party to the Genocide Convention since 1988. United States officials could be held accountable under the Genocide Convention for complicity in genocide. According to the Genocide Convention, acts amounting to genocide include deliberately inflicting on a group or part of a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.
They may also be prosecuted for incitement to genocide based on their official statements, or for conspiracy to commit genocide based on their ongoing interactions with Israeli authorities. Both incitement and conspiracy are prohibited by American law and punishable in US courts.
Repeated Israeli military attacks on Palestinian civilians over the past fifteen months, the dismantling of the health care system and other essential civilian infrastructure, the siege, and the systematic denial of humanitarian aid are destroying the conditions for survival in Gaza. Ongoing indiscriminate attacks by the IDF continue to kill large numbers of civilians, including children.
International humanitarian law requires Israel to ensure that the basic needs of the people of Gaza are met. This includes ensuring that the people of Gaza have access to sufficient water, food, health care, and other basic necessities for survival.
Since Israel imposed a full siege on the Gaza Strip on October 9, 2023, the amount of aid entering the enclave has never been sufficient to meet the needs on the ground. For more than a year, Israel has deliberately failed to provide or even facilitate the delivery of critical supplies to the 2.1 million people still surviving in Gaza.
Amnesty International said in a major report, released in December, that Israel is committing acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Among its findings, the rights group said Israel has deliberately obstructed or denied the entry and delivery of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid.
A report released in November by the United Nations Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs in the Occupied Territories found that Israel's war in Gaza was consistent with the characteristics of genocide, with mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions deliberately imposed on the Palestinians there.
The Committee said that by imposing a siege on Gaza, obstructing humanitarian aid, and targeting and killing civilians and aid workers, despite repeated UN appeals, binding orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and Security Council resolutions, Israel is deliberately causing death, hunger, and serious injury, using starvation as a method of warfare, and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian people.
Further information
Full text: Genocide Determination in Sudan and Imposing Accountability Measures, Antony J. Blinken, US Secretary of State, press statement, published January 7, 2025
https://www.state.gov/genocide-determination-in-sudan-and-imposing-accountability-measures/