Top human rights investigators into Sudan’s brutal war called on Friday for a country-wide arms embargo as they recounted harrowing testimony of victims of horrific sexual attacks whose bodies are treated as a “theatre of operation” by fighters acting with total impunity.

“Since mid-April 2023, the conflict in Sudan has spread to 14 out of the 18 states impacting the entire country and the region, leaving eight million Sudanese internally displaced as a result of the conflict, with two million - over two million - forced to flee to neighbouring countries,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, Chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan.

Disturbing first findings

In its first report on the crisis after being created by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in October 2023, the panel insisted that rival militaries the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as well as their respective allies, were responsible for large-scale, indiscriminate and direct attacks involving airstrikes and shelling against civilians, schools, hospitals, communication networks and vital water and electricity supplies – indicating a total disregard for the protection of non-combatants.

The three independent rights experts leading the work of the Mission - Mohamed Chande Othman, Chair, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo and Mona Rishmawi – emphasized that the responsibility for the grave violations lay with “both parties and their respective allies” with many amounting to international crimes.

“In particular, we have found that both SAF and RSF conducted hostilities in densely-populated areas, in particular through constant strikes and artillery shellings in different cities, including Khartoum and different cities in Darfur, amongst others,” said Ms. Rishmawi.

Survivors’ bravery

Although the Government of Sudan has refused to cooperate with the fact-finding Mission after rejecting its mandate, investigators have gathered first-hand testimony from 182 survivors, family members and eyewitnesses. Extensive consultations with experts and civil society activists have also been conducted to corroborate and verify additional leads.

“Members of the RSF in particular have perpetrated sexual violence on a large scale in the context of attacks on cities in Darfur region and the greater Khartoum area,” insisted Ms. Ezeilo. “Victims recounted being attacked in their homes, beaten, lashed and threatened with death or harm to their relatives or children before being raped by more than one perpetrator. They were also subjected to sexual violence while seeking shelter from attacks or fleeing. We also found evidence of women being subjected to sexual slavery after being abducted by RSF members.”

El Geneina horrors

The panel’s report also offered insight into “large-scale, ethnic-based attacks on the non-Arab civilian population” – and in particular, the Masalit people - in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, an ethnically diverse city to around 540,000 people. Shortly after the outbreak of war in April 2023, the RSF and allied militia attacked the city, killing thousands, the investigators said, with “horrific assaults…torture, rape” and the destruction of property and pillage the norm.

“Masalit men were systematically targeted for killing,” the Mission’s report continued. “RSF and its allied militias went door to door in Masalit neighborhoods, looking for men and brutally attacking and killing them, sometimes in front of their families. Lawyers, doctors, human rights defenders, academics, community and religious leaders were apparently specifically targeted. RSF commanders reportedly issued orders to ‘comb the city’ and place checkpoints throughout”.

Highlighting the failure of the Sudanese military to protect civilians in cities and camps for those uprooted by the war, the rights experts urged the international community to extend the current arms embargo on the Darfurs to the whole of the country. “Starving the parties of arms and ammunition including new supplies of ammunition and arms will help in slowing down the appetite for hostilities,” said Mr. Othman.

Peacekeeping force call

The investigators also urged the establishment of a peacekeeping force by the international community, either under the purview of the UN or a regional body:

“This can be done by the United Nations and there has been, you know, in the neighbouring country, in South Sudan, there is actually, you know, a mandate for the United Nations to protect civilians in particular countries,” said Ms. Rishmawi. “This can also be done, as we know, from also the African Union, so regional organizations can actually do that.”

The breakdown in law and order in Sudan is such that children are widely recruited to take part in the conflict, too, the investigators said. “SAF is mobilizing and sometimes is mobilizing in schools, but its allied forces have been recruiting children and have been using children in combat. And that’s where the distinction that you find in our report. It is much more systematic and widespread by RSF,” Ms. Rishmawi noted.

“There has to be accountability” for this and other crimes, she continued, in a call for the creation of a special tribunal to hold perpetrators to account for the grave crimes continuing across Sudan with total impunity.

“These people need to be held to account. The fact that they were not held to account in previous conflicts is what made women the women's body, as a theater of operation for this war. This has to stop, and the only way to stop is to have an international judicial mechanism because there is no confidence,” she said.