The United Nations human rights chief has said the apparent deliberate denial of safe access to humanitarian agencies inside war-torn Sudan could constitute a war crime.
“Sudan has become a living nightmare. Almost half of the population (25 million people) urgently needs food and medical help. About 80 percent of hospitals have been out of service,” said United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk on Friday.
The Sudan crisis “continues to be marked by an insidious disregard for human life,” he told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, asserting that many of the violations of international humanitarian law committed by parties to the conflict “may amount to to war crimes or other atrocity crimes.”
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting Sudan's army for control of the country since April last year in a war that has killed thousands of people, displaced millions inside and outside the country and sparked warnings of famine.
Both sides “have killed thousands, seemingly without remorse,” Turk said, highlighting the use of heavy artillery, even in densely populated urban areas.
He said that in 11 months, at least 14,600 people had been killed and another 26,000 injured. “The real figures are certainly much higher.”
Outlining the implications of the apparent denial of aid, he called on the warring parties to “fulfill their legal obligations by opening humanitarian corridors without delay, before more lives are lost.”
Aid supplies have been looted and aid workers attacked, while international agencies and NGOs have complained of bureaucratic obstacles to entering the military-controlled Port Sudan hub to bring humanitarian assistance into the country.
Last month, the UN urged countries not to forget civilians and requested $4.1 billion to meet their humanitarian needs and support more than 1.5 million people who have fled to neighboring countries.
“With more than eight million people forced to flee within Sudan and to neighboring countries, this crisis is disrupting the country and deeply threatening peace, security and humanitarian conditions across the region,” Turk said.
Rape as a weapon of war
The human rights chief also highlighted another weapon in Sudan's continuing war.
“Sexual violence as a weapon of war, including rape, has been a defining – and despicable – feature of this crisis from the beginning,” she said.
Since last April, her team has documented 60 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence, involving at least 120 victims across the country, the vast majority women and girls, she said, but added that “these numbers are, unfortunately, a huge underrepresentation of reality. “
“Men in RSF uniform and armed men affiliated with the RSF were reported to be responsible for 81 percent of the documented incidents,” Turk said.
According to a UN Security Council report obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, sexual violence by the RSF and its allied militias was widespread.
The panel of experts said that, according to reliable sources in Geneina, a town in Western Darfur, women and girls as young as 14 were raped by RSF elements at a UN World Food Program storage facility that the paramilitary force controlled, in their homes, or when returning home to collect belongings after being displaced by violence. Additionally, 16 girls were reportedly kidnapped by RSF soldiers and raped in an RSF house.
“Racial insults towards the Masalit and non-Arab community were part of the attacks,” the panel said.
“Neighborhoods and houses were continually attacked, looted, burned, and destroyed,” especially those where Masalit and other African communities lived, and their people were harassed, assaulted, sexually abused, and sometimes executed.
The panel highlighted that disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks against civilians – including torture, rape and murder, as well as the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure – constitute war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
“The perpetrators of horrific human rights violations and abuses must be held accountable without delay,” Turk said Friday.
“And without delay, the international community must refocus its attention on this deplorable crisis before it descends further into chaos. The future of the people of Sudan depends on it.”
