The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan has committed numerous crimes against humanity in Sudan's civil war, in particular in its siege of El-Fasher in western Darfur, UN investigators said Friday.
The United Nations' fact-finding mission for Sudan also found evidence of war crimes by both sides in the conflict between the regular army and the RSF, which has killed tens of thousands of people since it broke out in April 2023.
"Our findings leave no room for doubt: civilians are paying the highest price in this war," mission chief Mohamed Chande Othman said in a statement.
The mission, in a new report, determined that the RSF had "committed crimes against humanity, notably murder, torture, forced displacement, persecution on ethnic grounds, and other inhumane acts".
The paramilitaries, who lost much of central Sudan including Khartoum earlier this year, are attempting to consolidate power in the west by seizing the last major city held by the army in the Darfur region: El-Fasher.
While faulting both sides in the conflict, the investigators highlighted in particular the RFS's brutality in that siege, where about 300,000 people live and which has effectively been sealed off.
"RSF, during the siege of El-Fasher and surrounding areas, committed myriad crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery, sexual violence," the fact-finding mission statement said.
It also pointed to forced displacement and persecution on ethnic, gender and political grounds.
"The RSF and its allies used starvation as a method of warfare and deprived civilians of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, medicine and relief supplies -- which may amount to the crime against humanity of extermination," it added.
Sexual violence
The investigators were not granted access to Sudan, but said they had travelled to surrounding countries, reviewed documents and videos and had conducted more than 250 interviews with victims and others to reach their conclusions.
The report, which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next week, determined that both sides in the conflict have arbitrarily arrested, detained and tortured civilians because of their ethnicity, political opinion, profession or alleged collaboration with the other side.
It highlighted that RSF detention centers were described in particularly bleak terms by survivors, who compared them to "slaughterhouses" where detainees were sometimes beaten to death and summarily executed.
The report also accused the paramilitary forces of committing rampant sexual violence, including rape, gang rape, forced marriage and sexual slavery.
"Women and girls from non-Arab communities, some as young as 12, were particularly targeted," the investigators said.
The fact-finding mission demanded international action to bring perpetrators to justice.
Mission head Othman said that, in Sudan's conflict, both sides "have deliberately targeted civilians through attacks, summary executions, arbitrary detention, torture, and inhuman treatment in detention facilities".
"These are not accidental tragedies but deliberate strategies amounting to war crimes."
By Nina LARSON/AFP
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