United Nations investigators have concluded that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces carried out a deliberate campaign of mass killings, rape, abductions, and starvation in Darfur that amounts to genocide, warning that the same pattern of atrocities is now emerging elsewhere in the country.
The UN fact-finding mission found that in al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, RSF fighters and allied militias besieged the city, then launched attacks that targeted non-Arab communities. Witnesses described entire neighborhoods emptied, families executed, and bodies left unburied in streets and homes.
Survivors told investigators that women and girls were abducted and subjected to mass gang rapes, sometimes in rooms where the corpses of relatives still lay. Testimonies detailed sexual violence used not only to terrorize individuals but to destroy families and communities, with victims selected on the basis of their ethnic identity.
The report concludes that the RSF and its allies used starvation as a weapon of war. By encircling al-Fashir, blocking humanitarian aid, and shelling markets, farms, and water points, they created conditions in which civilians were systematically deprived of food and basic necessities. Investigators classified this as the war crime of starvation and as part of a broader genocidal strategy.
The RSF has repeatedly denied responsibility for atrocities during Sudan’s civil war, dismissing accounts from survivors and rights groups as fabrications by political enemies. UN investigators, however, say they have compiled extensive evidence, including satellite imagery, medical records, and hundreds of witness interviews, that corroborate a consistent pattern of attacks.
The UN human rights chief warned that similar tactics are now being deployed around al-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan. His office has documented summary executions, abductions, torture, and sexual violence in surrounding areas, as RSF forces mass on the city’s outskirts. Al-Obeid hosts around half a million people, including tens of thousands already displaced by earlier fighting.
The fact-finding mission had previously reported that the mass killings in al-Fashir bore the hallmarks of genocide. The latest findings go further, asserting that the widespread and systematic nature of the killings, rapes, and deliberate starvation reflects an intentional policy to destroy targeted communities in whole or in part.
Investigators say the pattern of encirclement, attacks on civilian infrastructure, obstruction of aid, and large-scale abuses should serve as a warning. They urge states and international bodies to act swiftly to protect civilians and to ensure accountability for those responsible.
