The United Nations has issued a stark warning that the risk of genocide remains “very high” in Sudan, as ethnically motivated violence continues to plague the country’s brutal civil war.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a bitter power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The conflict has left tens of thousands dead and forced 13 million people from their homes, with some four million fleeing across borders, in what the UN has described as the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
“Both parties have committed serious human rights violations,” Virginia Gamba, a UN under-secretary-general and acting special adviser to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the prevention of genocide, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday.
Of particular concern, she said, were the ongoing targeted assaults against certain ethnic groups, especially in the Darfur and Kordofan regions. Gamba singled out the RSF and allied Arab militias, accusing them of conducting ethnically driven attacks against the Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur communities.
“The risk of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan remains very high,” she warned.
Her comments follow last month’s ruling by the International Court of Justice, which dismissed a case brought by Sudan against the United Arab Emirates. Sudan had accused the UAE of complicity in genocide by allegedly providing support to the RSF — claims which the UAE strongly denied. The top UN court found it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case.
