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“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
- Exterior shot : Palais des Nations
- Interior shot: Briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English)—Ravina Shamdasani, Spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): “Warring parties in Sudan are overseeing a wholesale assault on human rights amid global inaction. 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.”
- Cutaway: Briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English)—Ravina Shamdasani, Spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): “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.”
- Cutaway: Briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English)—Ravina Shamdasani, Spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): “Proliferation of arms and continued weapons supplies, including to the western Darfur region, where a UN Security Council arms embargo is in place, are also compounding the fighting, enabling violations of international law and undermining peace efforts. Allthose 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.”
- Cutaway: Briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English)—Li Fung, Head of the Sudan office for at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): “There are also 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.”
- Cutaways: Briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English)—Li Fung, Head of the Sudan office for at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): “Retaliatory attacks and summary killings of people suspected of collaborating with opposing forces remain a serious concern. Such attacks – which are often ethnically-motivated – have continued unabated, fanned by hate speech and incitement to violence, particularly on social media.”
- Cutaways: Briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English)—Li Fung, Head of the Sudan office for at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): “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.”
- Cutaways: Briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English)—Li Fung, Head of the Sudan office for at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): “The accounts of sexual violence – and patterns of rape and gang rape – were particularly horrific. 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.”
- Cutaways: Briefing room
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