UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for an immediate halt to the military increase in Sudan, after the World Health Organization confirmed reports that 460 people were shot dead in a maternity hospital by paramilitaries.
Guterres said in a statement that he was “gravely concerned by the recent military escalation in al-Fashar,” calling for an “immediate end to the siege and hostilities.”
The Security Council met later on Thursday in New York and issued a statement expressing “grave concern” about the situation in the North Darfur region and al-Fashar.
The Council “condemned alleged atrocities by the RSF [the Rapid Support Forces militia] against the civilian population, including “summary executions and arbitrary detentions,” and demanded that the perpetrators be held accountable.
Sudan divided in long-running civil war
The last major holdout by Sudanese government forces in Darfur, the Rapid Support Forces militia captured al-Fashar after an 18-month siege during the country’s civil war.
The RSF’s roots can be found in the Janjaweed militia responsible for atrocities targeting non-Arab communities in Darfur two decades ago, with observers alleging the group is planning ethnic cleansing of groups such as the Fur and Zaghawa people.
It now controls most of western Sudan, while the country’s military controls much of the north and east.
The army seized full control of the capital Khartoum in March, but the RSF has set up a parallel administration in the southwestern city of Nyala, turning the country into a de facto divided state.
‘No public pressure’ on allies like RSF or UAE
Speaking to DW on Thursday, Khulud Khair, founding director of the Confluence advisory think tank in Nairobi, said it was difficult to get a sense of what was happening on the ground in Al-Fashar, given the prolonged telecommunications blackouts.
The only information currently available is “either the videos the RSF themselves are taking of their war crimes and atrocities” and observations from institutions such as the Yale Observatory, which often use satellite footage.
He said he had no confidence in RSF leader Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo’s pledge to investigate any wrongdoing by his forces.
Khair said this was “just talk”, noting that RSF has in recent years and decades been “living within and relying on a culture of global and national impunity, which has allowed them to attack and kill Sudanese people without any accountability”.
Asked about the international response to the increase in violence in the more than two-year-old conflict, Khair said, “The people of Darfur are effectively alone,” with only public appeals for peace and almost no efforts to exclude promoters of the fighting, such as the United Arab Emirates, “which has been the RSF’s main arms supplier.”
“There’s certainly no public pressure,” Khair said. “A lot of the statements that are being issued… are not naming the UAE and not naming the types of violence that we are seeing: atrocities, genocidal violence. And that is a huge problem in terms of confronting and hopefully putting a stop to the type of violence that we are seeing.”
UN official: Security Council ‘has not taken decisive action’
Martha Ama Akyia Pobbi, the UN assistant secretary-general for Africa, was also critical of the international community’s response to Thursday’s Security Council meeting in New York, which was brought forward at the request of the UK, Denmark and the council’s rotating African members.
“Reports and warnings about the impending catastrophe in Al-Fashar have been issued for months,” he said. “So far, the UN Security Council has not taken decisive action to prevent the situation from worsening.”
He called on the UN body to “use all tools at its disposal to seek peace in Sudan”.
Meanwhile, speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Sudan’s ambassador to the EU, Eldelbagy Kabir, said the EU’s statement on the conflict was “well below our expectations.”
Kabir called on the EU to “put pressure on the militia’s regional and international sponsors”, enforce the 2004 UN embargo on arms exports to the Darfur region, achieve “international justice to end impunity”, and designate the RSF militia as a terrorist entity.
Edited by Shawn Sinico