UN probe finds mass killings, gang rapes by Sudan’s RSF amount to genocide

A United Nations Fact-Finding Mission released findings on Wednesday concluding that Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces perpetrated genocide in the western city of el-Fasher during and after their siege of the North Darfur state capital. The investigation documented systematic violence against civilians including mass killings, gang rapes, and deliberate starvation as components of an intentional policy.

The mission's report built upon earlier findings from February that had already identified characteristics consistent with genocide. Survivors provided testimony describing sexual violence in locations where bodies of recently killed civilians, including family members, remained present. The investigation also determined that the RSF and allied forces committed the war crime of starvation by maintaining a prolonged siege that restricted humanitarian relief supplies and damaged food production infrastructure.

The RSF has consistently denied such allegations throughout the three-year conflict with Sudan's military, characterising survivor accounts as fabrications by adversaries and making counter-accusations against them. The paramilitary force has not acknowledged responsibility for the documented abuses.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk previously warned of a developing "catastrophe" in el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state in south-central Sudan, where documented patterns include summary executions, abductions, torture, and sexual violence. The city currently hosts approximately half a million residents, including over 83,000 internally displaced persons.

The UN Human Rights Council condemned the violence and established an urgent inquiry into reported abuses in the el-Obeid region. The United Kingdom and other nations have cautioned about the risk of large-scale atrocities as RSF forces have concentrated around el-Obeid. The fact-finding mission indicated that patterns documented in el-Fasher—including encirclement, attacks on civilian infrastructure, humanitarian access restrictions, and widespread civilian abuses—serve as a warning for the situation developing in other contested areas.