“As hostilities have expanded in reach and intensity over the past year, the lives and hopes of so many Sudanese have been uprooted and caught in a mire of death, deprivation and suffering,” said UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani.
“Two years of this brutal and senseless conflict must be a wake-up call to the parties to lay down their weapons and for the international community to act,” she told reporters at the UN biweekly press briefing in Geneva.
Shamdasani explained that the conflict in Sudan is not merely a power struggle, but is significantly influenced by economic and business interests of national and international actors, in key sectors such as gold and agricultural commodities.
She added that the Proliferation of arms and continued weapons supplies, including to the western Darfur region, where a UN Security Council arms embargo is in place, are compounding the fighting, enabling violations of international law and undermining peace efforts. “All those involved in facilitating the transfer of arms and military material to Darfur must stop, in compliance with the embargo. We call, again, for the arms embargo to be expanded to cover the whole of Sudan.”
The conflict, between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, has been marked by complete disregard for the laws of war and for international human rights law from the outset, with the parties regularly attacking populated areas and critical civilian infrastructure, such as healthcare facilities, water stations and power plants, perpetrating serious human rights violations and abuses, and obstructing humanitarian aid, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement.
Joining from Nairobi, UN Human Rights head of the Sudan office Li Fung said there were “growing concerns about the hostilities escalating and expanding to new areas, including in Kordofan, Blue Nile and Northern State, and the devastating impact for the civilian population who have already endured two years of conflict”.
“Retaliatory attacks and summary killings of people suspected of collaborating with opposing forces remain a serious concern,” Fung told the reporters. “Such attacks – which are often ethnically-motivated – have continued unabated, fanned by hate speech and incitement to violence, particularly on social media.”
She said her team travelled recently to to eastern Chad and gathered over 160 testimonies from men, women, boys and girls who had fled conflict and violence in North and West Darfur. “Victims and witnesses recounted to us ethnically targeted attacks by the RSF on villages in North and West Darfur, based on the ethnicity of the inhabitants, and extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, arbitrary detention and torture.”
“The accounts of sexual violence – and patterns of rape and gang rape – were particularly horrific,” Fung said. “Numerous survivors of violence in West Darfur in 2023 had only been able to flee recently, as they had been held by the RSF in conditions amounting to sexual slavery.”
ENDS
For more information and media requests, please contact:
Ravina Shamdasani: +41 22 917 9169 / ravina.shamdasani@un.org
Thameen Al-Kheetan: +41 22 917 4232 / thameen.alkheetan@un.org
Seif Magango: +41 79 752 0488 / seif.magango@un.org
Tag and share – Twitter: @UNHumanRights and Facebook: unitednationshumanrights
STORY: UN Human Rights Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani, and UN Human Rights head of Sudan office Li Fung on the consequences of the ongoing conflict
TRT: 02:40
SOURCE: OHCHR
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: English/NATS
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 11 April 2025 – GENEVA, SWITZERLAND AND NAIROBI, KENYA
SHOTLIST
1
1
1
Edited News | UNWOMEN
Aid agencies echoed wider warnings of growing signs of widespread starvation in Gaza on Tuesday, as UN-partnered international food security experts released their most dire assessment yet of the situation in the wartorn enclave.
1
1
1
Edited News | IOM , UNDP , UNHCR
Sudan: urgent help needed as more than 1.3 million war-displaced people begin to return home
As conflict rages on across parts of Sudan, pockets of relative safety have emerged in the past four month, spurring more than one million internally displaced Sudanese to make their way home, says the International Organization for Migration (IOM). A further 320,000 cross-border refugees have come back to Sudan since last year, mainly from Egypt and South Sudan, to assess the current situation before deciding to return to their country for good.
1
1
1
Edited News | UNRWA , WHO
Gaza: SOS messages describe people fainting from hunger; UN health worker detained
Worrying alerts from United Nations staff in Gaza who have been fainting from hunger and exhaustion over the past 48 hours have increased fears for people’s survival in the devastated enclave, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.
1
1
1
Edited News | UNHCR , UNOG
Over 11.6 million refugees risk losing aid access due to funding cuts, says UNHCR
Approximately one in three refugees and other vulnerable individuals normally supported by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) are expected to lose out from funding cuts, it said on Friday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR
Ravina Shamdasani, Spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, made the following announcement on the Office’s opening of a new mission in Bangladesh.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR
“The surge in the number of Afghans forced or compelled to return to Afghanistan this year is creating a multi-layered human rights crisis requiring the urgent attention of the international community,” UN Human Rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Friday called for accountability and justice for the killings and other gross human rights violations and abuses in the southern city of Suweida.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNHCR
Syria: hundreds killed in Sweida, ‘widespread’ violations as civilians flee for their lives
Amid violent clashes in southern Syria’s Sweida governorate, a picture of grave human rights abuses and rising humanitarian needs is emerging by the hour, the UN said on Friday.
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
At the bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva the UN Human Rights Spokesperson Liz Throssell made the following statement on the latest number of civilian casualties in Ukraine.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
The UN Human Rights Office on Tuesday called for investigations into hundreds of killings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by Israeli security forces and settlers, warning against ongoing forced mass displacement of the Palestinian population.
1
1
2
Edited News | OHCHR , UNRWA
Nearly 900 people have been killed in Gaza in recent weeks trying to fetch food, with most deaths linked to private aid hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the UN Human Rights Office have today released a report detailing the evolution of violent gang incidents beyond the capital Port-au-Prince since October 2024 up to June 2025, and the resulting loss of life and mass displacement.