UN Mission Says ‘Outrageous Acts’ Committed by Both Sides in Civil War

A fighter loyal to Sudan's army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, holds up a weapon backdropped by the minaret of a mosque, during a graduation ceremony in the southeastern Gedaref state of Sudan on May 27, 2024. AFP via Getty Images

Sudan’s civil war has involved abuses by both sides that may amount to war crimes, according to a report by a fact-finding mission to the country that was delegated by the United Nations.

The report by the independent international fact-finding mission for Sudan says almost 19,000 people have been killed and 33,000 injured since the war broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The fact-finding mission, which was chaired by a Tanzanian judge, Mohamed Chande Othman, said both sides were guilty of indiscriminate shelling, which caused widespread civilian deaths. However, it said the RSF was mostly responsible for widespread sexual violence.

“The gravity of these findings underscores the urgent and immediate action to protect civilians,” Othman said.

“SAF and RSF and their respective allied forces must refrain from directing attacks against civilians or civilian objects, pillage and looting of property and committing outrageous acts against persons, including torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, and recruitment and use of children.”

He also called for the current limited arms embargo on the western Darfur region to be expanded to the whole country.

“The fact-finding mission considers that fighting will stop once the arms flow stops,” the report said. “There is a risk that those supplying arms may be complicit in grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law.”

The SAF, led by Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, is supported by neighboring Egypt and has accused RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, of being funded by the United Arab Emirates, a claim the Gulf state has denied.

The Sudan conflict has, to some degree, been overshadowed since Oct. 7, 2023, by the Israel–Hamas conflict in Gaza.

The report, which was based on 182 interviews with survivors, their family members, and witnesses, said: “Both SAF and RSF failed to take sufficient measures to minimize the impact of airstrikes or artillery shelling on civilians.

“Practices inconsistent with international humanitarian law, including indiscriminate attacks posing risk to the lives of civilians, also violate international human rights law.”

The U.N. investigators said there was an urgent need for an “independent and impartial force” to protect civilians in Sudan, and it warned that foreign governments who arm and finance the warring parties could be legally complicit.

Sexual Violence ‘Widespread’

The fact-finding mission said it found evidence that “sexual and gender-based violence, in particular rape and gang rape, is widespread in the context of the conflict and continues to occur on a large scale across Sudan.”

It said firsthand sources gave evidence of the rape of girls as young as 8 years old and women as old as 75.

“Men and boys were not spared, although the number of reported cases is substantially lower,” it said.

“Rape and other forms of sexual violence documented by the fact-finding mission were largely attributed to men wearing RSF uniforms and, in the context of Darfur, armed men allied to RSF, who victims referred to as janjaweed, wearing traditional attire and a shawl around their head.”

The authors of the report said the violence had an “ethnic undertone” in areas such as West Darfur, where the Masalit community was targeted by ethnic Arab RSF fighters.

The fact-finding mission said it found evidence of a massacre of Masalit civilians by the RSF and its allies in El-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, in June 2023.

Sudanese army soldiers, loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, pose for a picture at the Rapid Support Forces base in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, Sudan, on April 16, 2023. AFP via Getty Images

“Interviewees described RSF and allied militias using racial slurs against Masalits and other non-Arab groups, describing them as ‘umbay/slave’ and ‘nuba/black,’ accompanied by threats and claims that the land belonged to Arabs,” the report stated.

The report said Masalit women were, “assaulted, raped and robbed of their belongings because of their ethnicity” and that one rape survivor said she was told, “We will make you, the Masalit girls, give birth to Arab children.”

Ten million people are believed to have been driven from their homes by the fighting, including more than 2 million who have fled to neighboring Egypt, Chad, or Ethiopia.

In July, the United States invited representatives from both warring sides to talks in Switzerland in August to discuss aid access, rather than a cease-fire.

‘Senseless Conflict Must End’

At the time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “The scale of death, suffering, and destruction in Sudan is devastating. This senseless conflict must end.”

Last week, at the conclusion of those talks, the State Department issued a briefing, in which the U.S. special envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, said they had managed to get both parties to agree to allow safe access for aid along certain corridors.

He also said the RSF had committed to a “code of conduct” regarding the protection of civilians.

But Perriello added, “On the third area of priority of cessation of hostilities, we unfortunately see a lack of political will at the time for the parties to stop fighting.”

In December 2023, the U.N. General Assembly voted for a resolution that called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Sudan, but the United States and Israel were among 10 countries to vote against it, while the UK, Germany, and South Sudan were among those who abstained.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.