By Human Rights Watch (HRW) has raised the alarm that genocide may have been committed in Sudan, as the country remains mired in a brutal civil war that has been largely ignored by the international community.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Tom Perriello, the UN’s special envoy to Sudan, expressed his concerns about the world’s lack of engagement with the crisis, despite the escalating violence and widespread famine.
The conflict erupted in April 2022 when long-standing tensions between Sudan’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, boiled over into fierce street battles in the capital, Khartoum.
The fighting has since spread to other regions, particularly in urban areas and the Darfur region, where the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that at least 1.7 million people are facing emergency levels of hunger, with reports of people surviving on grass and peanut shells.
In a comprehensive 218-page report released on Thursday, HRW accused the RSF and its allied militias of committing crimes against humanity and widespread war crimes in West Darfur, as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign targeting the Masalit people and other non-Arab communities.
The report documents harrowing accounts of violence, including an incident where RSF forces allegedly murdered children after killing their parents in front of them.
Tirana Hassan, HRW’s executive director, called for immediate action from governments, the African Union, and the United Nations to protect civilians and hold those responsible accountable through targeted sanctions and cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC). “The global inaction in the face of atrocities of this magnitude is inexcusable,” she stated.
Despite the escalating humanitarian crisis and the shocking violence, Perriello noted that global attention has been fleeting, with only a brief surge of interest around the one-year anniversary of the conflict in April.
He urged for increased awareness and action, emphasizing that “a lot of people right now are facing acute famine and other horrific conditions” and that the world must “start bringing attention to this silent war and silent famine.”
The WFP’s representative in Sudan, Babagana Ahmadu, shared distressing photos of severely malnourished children and elderly people in a camp for displaced persons in Central Darfur.
“People are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells,” he said, adding that “recent reports from our partners indicate that 20 children have died in recent weeks of malnutrition in that … camp.”
HRW’s report on West Darfur paints a grim picture of the RSF and its affiliated militias killing thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more as they pursued, rounded up, and shot civilians indiscriminately.
The violence reached a horrifying crescendo on June 15, when the RSF and its forces allegedly fired on kilometer-long convoys of civilians desperately trying to flee.
As the silent war and famine in Sudan continue to claim lives and destroy communities, the urgent call for global action and accountability grows louder.
The world cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed in this beleaguered nation.
Credit: The Independent.co.uk
