UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : HRC - Investigative Bodies Press Conference : Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan

[Other language spoken]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Sorry for the delay.

Thank you for joining us at this press conference with the International, with the Independent International Fact Finding Mission for the Sudan, which was created by the Human Rights Council in 2023 to investigate all alleged violations that have occurred in the context of the ongoing armed conflict.

The mission released its latest report this morning, and we'll present those findings to the Human Rights Council next week.

And now they're here to answer any questions that you may have.

Joining us today by Zoom are the chair of the Fact Finding Mission, Mr Mohammed Chande Othman and fellow expert Miss Joy Ngozi Azelo.

And here in the room in Geneva with me is Miss Mona Rishmawi.

We'll start off with brief opening statements by each of the experts, and then we'll open the floor to your questions.

One of the experts may be having a slight difficulty with her connection, so I'm not sure if either the Chair or Professor Izello should go first, but perhaps one of you, please go ahead.

And if, if Miss Zello cannot join, we would ask Mr the Chair to read both statements.

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On behalf of the Fact Finding Mission Sudan, let me say the following.

The Fact Finding mission finds that the 18 month siege of Al Fasher that preceded the takeover of the city on 26th on 27th of October was used to systematically dismantle the means of survival of its predominantly non Arab population, particularly the Zagawa and Fu, culminating in catastrophic humanitarian collapse.

How did this unfold?

From mid 2024, the Rapids support forces RSF encircled encircled the city, cutting of food, water, electricity and medical supplies while subjugating residential areas, displacement camps, markets and places of worship to repeated shelling and drone strikes.

Ethan Burns, developed by the RSF and trenches extending over 31 kilometres around Alfashi, restricted civilian movements and effectively entramed its population.

The RSF also launched ground attacks and displacement camps and Alfashi neighbourhoods, destroying and looting markets.

The humanitarian convoy were blocked and community kitchens providing little food that remain in the city were also attacked and survivors reported surviving on animal folder called ambuzz, tree leaves and residual oil.

Children in the elderly died from malnutrition.

Water systems were damaged and destroyed, forcing reliance on unsafe sources of water and accelerating diseases.

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So by the time of the takeover on 25th or 26th of October, only one remaining hospital was functional.

But following the RSF entry into El Fascia, that facility and Saudi Hospital ceased operating.

Patients suffering from treatable diseases or moderate injuries died from lack of care injured and sub civilians were forced to flee on foot for days without food, water or medical assistance.

That Ch was followed by massive displacement.

An estimated 100,000 people fled in late October alone, according to United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sudan.

Many families were separated during their flight, either to increase their chances of survival or emit the chaos of RSA pursuing them on the road and out of the city.

Hundreds of children arrived in several areas without their parents or any family members or this participants or the survivors described in fascia as a ghost town.

Physical destruction was compounded by profound psychological trauma and survivors reportedly enduring starvation.

Witnessing family members killed and or rape was subjected to other sexual violence and disappearance of their loved ones.

Many remain desperate and the knowledge of their whereabouts is still unknown.

Their suffering is compounded by the loss of breadwinners in their families, leaving women and children in extreme vulnerability.

The culminative effect of prolonged starvation, denial of humanitarian aid and medical care, and restricted movements and targeted violence rendered survival increasingly impossible for the affected communities, creating condition of life incapable with human survival.

Let me pass on to Professor Joey Eziel on mute.

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Continuing our finding, the independent Fact Finding Mission for the Sudan has concluded that the takeover of Alfasia in late October 2025 was marked marked by mass killings, widespread rape, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances committed by the Rapid Support Forces, RSF.

Over the course of the three days, civilians and those all the combat attempting to flee were intercepted, separated and executed at exit point and a long acting burns surrounding the city.

Survivors described men being bound and shot in groups, bodies left unburied along groups and wounded persons executed at close range.

In some instances, women and children were also killed.

Verified videos and satellite imagery corroborate accounts of mass killings, including at Elfashire University and the former Children's Hospital, which was converted into a detention and execution site.

Hospitals were not spared.

At El Saudi Hospital, RSL fighters went word by word, killing patients.

Doctors and accompanying family members were killed in large numbers.

Survivors reported that over 460 people present in the hospital were executed and satellite imagery indicate subsequent burning of bodies.

Sexual and gender based violence was persuasive, systematic, systematic and ethnically targeted.

Women and girls 7 to 70 were subjected to rape, mass and gang rape, and other forms of sexual and gender based violence including killings, weeping, beatings, humiliation, forced nudity and sexual harassment, while being robbed of their belongings, often in front of family members or among corpses.

Survivors reported the perpetrator that perpetrators explicitly targeted women from non Arab communities, particularly the Zagawa using dehumanising and ex symmetry languages language with numerous women and girls being raped during the summit incident indicating that the cases documented by the mission represent only a fraction of a wider pattern.

Sexual violence was used deliberately to terrorise and destroy the social fabric, the social fabric of of the targeted communities.

Survivors suffered severe physical and psychological harm, lasting trauma and in some cases death, highlighting the extreme vulnerability and gendered impact of the conflict.

The mission also documented the widespread forms of torture and cruel treatment, arbitrary detention, and for disappearances and extortion.

Men and boys were separated from women and children at checkpoints and burns, detained in trucks, shipping containers and makeshift facilities, and subjected to severe beatings, burning, mutilation and humiliation.

Many remain missing to date ransom demands we have frequently issued to families with higher sums demanded on based on ethnicity.

So the scale, coordination, reputation and public endorsement of this act by RSF leadership demonstrate that these were not isolated incidents but part of a planned and organised operation executed through an established command structure.

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Chair, I gentle ladies and gentlemen of the press, I pass on to my colleague Muna Reshwana.

Thank you very much.

Thank you Chair and Professor Azilo.

Let me now address what does this pattern that was described by the Chair and Professor Azilo means in law when we assess the totality of the overwhelming evidence that we gathered.

You saw my Professor Osilo was talking about killings in particular places that we documented in locations that we know about.

And we assess this overwhelming evidence, the scale of the killings, the the systematic nature of sexual violence, the deliberate starvation and the targeting of specific ethnic communities.

In this case, it's the Zagawa.

And the 4A broader, more alarming legal conclusion emerges based on the pattern consolidation scale, systematic nature and cumulative effect of these crimes.

There is only one possible conclusion.

It's an indication of a part of genocide.

Our mission found that at least three of the underlying acts of genocide have been committed.

And any of these acts, if committed by with the with the intention to destroy specific ethnic, ethnic, national or racial group could constitute genocide.

So the three underlying acts are killings of members of a protected group.

In this case is the Zagawa and the four, causing serious bodily harm, mental bodily and mental harm, rape, sexual violence, torture and so on, and deliberately, in fact inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the protected group in whole or in part.

The four, the four Mess elite and Zagawa are protected groups under international law, and already the International Criminal Court told us that much.

After carefully considering all possible alternative explanations, the mission concluded that the only reasonable inference that can be drawn from the pattern of conduct in and and around Al Fashir is that the perpetrators acted with genocidal intent.

This is not a conclusion we reach lightly.

It is inferred from the body of evidence as a whole, from the scale and sequence of attacks, from the coordinated mass killings and executions, from the widespread rape, from the starvation siege, from the pattern of ethnic targeting and from the statements by the perpetrators expressing intent to eliminate and destroy these communities.

The risk of further genocide, genocidal violence remains serious and ongoing, particularly in the conflict around in Cordovan.

Therefore, our recommendations are the following.

First, civilians must be protected immediately.

We have already recommended the deployment of an international protection force and this recommendation have has been reiterated by the African Union and the African Commission's Joint Fact Finding mission.

There is now an urgent lead to translate this recommendation into practise.

Second, the Darfur arms embargo must be fully enforced and expanded to cover the entire Sudan.

States must prevent the transfer of weapons, ammunitions, equipment, financial and logistical support to any party implicated in the in the violations.

Third, meaningful targeted sanctions should be imposed against those who are responsible for the atrocity climbs and against those enabling them.

Sanctions must be denied to disrupt the capacity to continue committing these violations.

4th and that's really key.

Unrestricted humanitarian access must be secured and freedom of movement guaranteed for civilians.

We don't actually know what is happening to the people of Al Faisal.

Very few of them came out of Al Faisal right now.

So and we know that it's, it looks like a ghost town.

People need to be allowed to leave if they can.

5th accountability is essential.

Perpetrators continue to commit these crimes because they believe they can act with impunity.

They must be fully There must be full cooperation with the International Criminal Court and serious consideration for additional judicial avenues capable of addressing atrocity crimes, good atrocity crimes, particularly the genocide now committed in Sudan.

6th, the survivors must be supported.

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They are in desperate conditions.

They must, they must receive sustained medical and psychological support along with meaningful reparative measures.

And 7th evidence must be preserved and the fate of the whereabout of the missings and deterred persons clarified.

Investigative investigative bodies such as our own mission should be granted access to Al Faqsar and the surrounded areas.

Today, the Security Council is meeting to discuss Sudan under the Presidency of the United Kingdom.

This discussion must translate into concrete action.

Council members should use the tools at their disposal to strengthen civilian protection, reinforce and expand the embargo, ensure strict compliance and and advance accountability.

Next week, we will be formally presenting our finding to the findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

That Council too must respond with clarity and resolve by sustaining independent investigations, supporting protection measures and reinforcing credible pathways to justice.

Sudan has already showed the world the cost of hesitation.

There should be no hesitation.

The evidence is before us, legal analysis is clear and the warning signs are unmistakable.

The responsibility now lies with states to protect civilians, to protect, to prevent further destruction and ensure accountability before more lives are lost.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone, for those important opening remarks.

And now we'll open the floor to questions.

First, we'll go to those in the room, and then we'll go online.

We'll start with Robin from the Asian France press.

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So we're talking here about genocide and somebody must be funding this and somebody must be providing the weapons and the material for this to happen.

So my, my question is very blunt.

Who Who's providing the money and who's providing the weapons?

I think this is a key question and this is really important to understand the mechanisms in which this is being done.

And what I can say at this stage is that it's multiple actors, it's a complex network and it's expanding.

And what we are trying to do is to analyse this complex network and we'll be reporting on that, on that issue very soon.

I think you'll hear on us, from us on this matter.

So what we, what I can also say is that we are engaging with main parties, let's call it like this, main parties.

And we hope that they'll understand the message.

Enough is enough.

We reached the point of genocide now.

Enough is enough.

And really we all need to take our responsibilities seriously and states need to take the responsibility seriously.

You'll hear more from about this from us soon.

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If you could, please identify yourself and the media outlet that you work for.

We'll start with Moussa from Almai.

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Thank you very much.

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I have two or three questions, please.

The first one about the number of those killed and how many known Arabs and how many are Arabs in described.

The second one, do you have specific names of those involved in these crimes?

And finally, what about the responsibility of the external powers that support the Rapid Support Forces in these crimes?

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Would the chair or Professor Izello like to to answer the question or?

Yeah, thank you very much.

I can respond to that.

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With regard to the number of people who have been killed as as a result of the the takeover on 25th, 26th, 27th, as you say, you have to look at the human rights mechanism as working in tandem.

So the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has established about 6000 dead as a result of the three days of of violence.

But in ourselves we have documented mass killings, summary executions and so on involving multi people.

The requirement for genocide is that there must be numerically it is not the most essential element so long as there are sufficient number of people killed.

And I think that threshold has been reached in so far as the requirements both for definition of genocide are concerned.

But we have documented and you will see in our report various killings in various groups, various numbers, sometimes 68 children and so on and and and and and and and and and and so forth.

Because part of the our mandate is to identify perpetrators and we have identified perpetrators, including those that are in in a command position through what we call confidential dossiers investigated.

Of course the report pinpoints one individual, notorious individual, Abu Lulu.

And I think this is not in any violation of his due process rights because these are something which is really in the public domain already.

But we have compiled and I think this is in relation to best practises of Human Rights Commission to document names of individuals, persons of interest.

And I think this will be shared appropriately with any international or credible national judicial mechanism that is ready to exercise universal jurisdictions and so on.

Again, I think the question of external actors was raised there was responded to by by my colleague.

And I think the most important thing is to say that we are already now engaging with a number of States and to put to them the queries that we have concerning either their involvement or their companies or entities or their nationals.

And this is ongoing and will be subject to further revelation as we move this investigation.

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We'll go next to Alicia from Spanish News Agency.

I thank you for taking my questions.

I wanted to ask because I saw in your report that you indicate that there has been an escalation from ethnically targeted attacks to add that can be considered as signs of genocide.

So I wanted to know when this escalation happened and where did did you see this escalation in with the signs?

Also, I wanted to know if did you detected this targeting of ethnical minorities at the beginning of the world?

Was this one of the motivations of the world?

And also I wanted to know if there's going to be any procedure to take this to the courts or how what what are you planning to do with this evidence?

[Other language spoken]

I'll take this.

But there is one part that I didn't understand completely.

So the escalation, the escalation is really what we are seeing and that's the pattern that I'd like.

There is a part in the report about the modus operandi about what actually what is happening.

And the key point about this is that the the three days of onslaught of the of the slaughter that happened, the mass killings that happened in Al Fashir, was preceded with 18 months of siege.

That siege weakened the population drastically.

This was a siege that did not allow humanitarian assistance to get in.

There was no food.

When you talk to people, when you ask them what actually happened, what towards the end, and the chair was describing that towards the end there was no food.

People were extremely weakened.

So the attack happened on very weakened people who were starving, who didn't have enough water, who didn't have enough medicine.

They were drinking contaminated water and therefore a lot of diseases, but no hospitals.

There is nothing.

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So basically this modest operandi is the escalation we saw.

We saw before areas that were attacked and the moment the area was attacked, people could leave to another area.

In this case, the attack happened in a confined setting of Al Fashir and around it and preceded by months of weakening of the population.

And that's really very, very serious.

So that pattern of conduct has to stop because when you basically prevent the population from food drinking very, you know, good drinking water and medical attention, attention and prevent them from humanitarian assistance.

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You want to destroy them?

You want to kill them for 18 months?

What do you what you wanted to exhaust, to exhaust the ability to continue living.

And that's really the escalation.

So that's really important.

That's I think what distinguishes Al Faisar from let's say, other situations that we have documented before.

And that's why we are afraid that the same methods are being now used in other areas in cordovan.

That's why we, it is this method of approach, this genocidal pash that must be stopped.

So when you say 1 of the motivation is the motivation is to attack this particular ethnic groups.

I mean, Al Fashir is mostly the Zagawa community in the displacement camps around it.

Zamzam and Abu Shuku had mostly mostly a poor community and a bit of of mass elites.

And these people came from other displaced, they were displaced multiple times so that the attack was about these particular populations.

And when the attackers were attacking, particularly during the rape and massive killings, and those who survived horrific massacres were telling us that the attackers were using slayers, were basically looking for Zagawas, looking for food to kill them, to kill them.

So we know that the intention was to destroy these people.

And that's really very, very serious.

I hope I answered your questions.

We have a mandate, of course, to cooperate with the with judicial bodies and of course we are cooperating with the judicial bodies.

The International Criminal Court has a jurisdiction over the situation in Darfur.

And Al Fashir is in the midst of Darfur is actually an important it's it was the capital of Darfur at one stage of North Darfur.

So it's it's really an important area.

And so of course, we are cooperating with judicial bodies, including the International Criminal Court, but we also think that there has to be this the International Criminal Court can only do so much very important that they work that they are doing.

This is why we are recommending that there should be a separate independent institution, judicial institution judicial like a court that works in tandem with the ICC and also states must must exercise universal jurisdiction.

A lot of the commanders that we are talking about and their names are every were in the report travel all over the all over countries that have jurisdiction to do something about it and that's really important.

[Other language spoken]

Were there any follow up questions Alicia from you, I think any more questions from the room or online?

[Other language spoken]

I don't see any any more any final statements from the chair or or fellow experts?

OK, I can't tell if the chair wants to see something.

Did you have anything else to say?

A final statement, the Chair?

Yeah, yes, thank you very much.

As we mentioned before, we will be presenting the report in in detail to the members of the Human Right Council next week and we'll be able to engage more in terms of any specific vehicles.

As we mentioned earlier, the risk of escalation still continues with a number of cities Kadugli dealing in in in Cordovan, you know under siege and siege like conditions.

So I think this is something that, you know, we would like to bring to the attention of the international community.

So I thank you for your keen interest in our work.

OK, thank you very much.

If there are no additional questions, that will bring us to the end of this press conference.

Thank you everyone for joining and have a good day.

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