The ongoing conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was the central focus of the first session of the year at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, alongside Mohamed Chande Othman, Chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan, addressed the escalating violence and its devastating impact on civilians.
Mr. Türk reported a sharp rise in civilian casualties, describing 2025 as “yet another chapter in the chronicle of cruelty.” According to documentation by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), killings of civilians more than doubled compared to the previous year, with at least 11,300 civilians killed and thousands more missing or unidentified. He stressed that violations by all parties have surged while accountability remains largely absent.
The conflict has been marked by indiscriminate attacks on densely populated areas, with schools, hospitals, markets, religious sites, and critical infrastructure frequently targeted. Mr. Türk highlighted the particularly brutal use of sexual violence, stating that women’s bodies have been “weaponised” to terrorize communities. Over 500 cases of sexual violence—including rape, gang rape, sexual torture, and slavery—were documented in 2025, some resulting in death, with survivors’ testimonies revealing the horrifying scale of abuse.
The RSF’s capture of the Zamzam camp in North Darfur in April and its subsequent offensive in El Fasher unleashed widespread carnage, resulting in thousands of deaths and constituting war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Mr. Türk warned that as the conflict shifts toward the Kordofan region, these patterns of brutal violence are likely to be repeated, noting a worrying escalation in drone strikes and blockades targeting civilians and humanitarian convoys, which have already killed or injured nearly 600 people this year.
The Independent Fact-Finding Mission emphasized the ongoing risk of genocidal violence. Mohamed Chande Othman pointed to El Fasher as exhibiting clear hallmarks of genocide by the RSF against the Zaghawa and Fur communities, including mass killings, serious bodily and mental harm, and conditions deliberately created to destroy populations in whole or in part. Systematic killings were documented across the city, including more than 460 deaths at El-Saudi hospital, with videos showing executions accompanied by ethnic slurs and survivors recounting threats explicitly targeting the Zaghawa.
Othman stressed that the violence in El Fasher demonstrates both continuity and escalation of atrocities, with the risk spreading to Kordofan. He warned that without urgent protection measures and credible accountability, the threat of further genocidal violence in Sudan remains severe and ongoing.
