All posts tagged: Sudans

US calls on Sudan’s military to join Geneva peace talks

US calls on Sudan’s military to join Geneva peace talks

CAIRO —  The United States on Friday called on Sudan’s military to join talks aimed at calming the country’s grinding conflict as the African country faces a worsening humanitarian crisis. The military has boycotted the negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, now in their third day, despite international pleas that it take part in the talks. Sudan’s military is battling the powerful paramilitary, known as Rapid Support Forces. “The RSF remains here ready for talks to start; SAF needs to decide to come,” U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello posted on X on Friday, using the acronym for Sudan’s Armed Forces. Diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the African Union and the United Nations were at the talks, which started earlier this week. Sudan’s paramilitary sent a delegation to Geneva. On Thursday, Sudan’s governing council, which is led by top military generals, announced that they had opened the key border crossing of Adre, from neighboring Chad into Sudan’s restive western region of Darfur, which has been the worst hit by fighting and displacement. …

Sudan’s paramilitary RSF accused of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in West Darfur | Conflict News

Sudan’s paramilitary RSF accused of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in West Darfur | Conflict News

Human Rights Watch says ‘thousands’ killed in attacks last year targeting Masalit tribe and other non-Arab groups. Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias killed “at least thousands of people” in West Darfur state, an international rights group has said, in what it called apparent “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”. In a report published on Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that RSF attacks on the Masalit tribe and other non-Arab groups between April and November 2023 were some of the worst atrocities in the ongoing civil war which started that April. The attacks in el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, saw entire neighbourhoods housing primarily displaced Masalit communities looted, burned, shelled and razed to the ground. The campaign that amounted to “ethnic cleansing” left hundreds of thousands of people as refugees, HRW said in its 186-page report. The violence, which included mass torture, rape and looting, peaked in mid-June – when thousands of people were killed within days – and surged again in November, it said. Alan Boswell from the International Crisis …

UN Security Council concerned over ethnically-based killings in Sudan’s North Darfur

UN Security Council concerned over ethnically-based killings in Sudan’s North Darfur

The U.N. Security Council on Saturday expressed its “deep concern” over an imminent attack on al-Fashir in Sudan’s North Darfur region by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Issued on: 27/04/2024 – 22:10Modified: 27/04/2024 – 22:12 1 min War erupted in Sudan one year ago between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF, creating the world’s largest displacement crisis. Al-Fashir is the last major city in the vast, western Darfur region not under control of the RSF. The RSF and its allies swept through four other Darfur state capitals last year, and were blamed for a campaign of ethnically driven killings against non-Arab groups and other abuses in West Darfur.   Read moreDozen killed in Darfur town as war in Sudan spreads The Security Council, in a statement, “expressed their deep concern over an imminent offensive by the Rapid Support Forces and their allied militias” against the city of al-Fashir. “They called on the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces to end the build-up of military forces and to take steps to de-escalate the situation,” …

Sudan’s Hotel Rwanda: the man who saved scores of people during Darfur violence | Sudan

Sudan’s Hotel Rwanda: the man who saved scores of people during Darfur violence | Sudan

Every night, for weeks at a time last year, Saad al-Mukhtar put a small group of people in the back of his Toyota Land Cruiser and drove them under the cover of darkness from his home in the Sudanese city of Geneina across the border and into Chad. The operation was an extraordinary act of bravery and selflessness: Mukhtar is an Arab, and the people he was smuggling to safety were members of the darker skinned Masalit community who were being targeted in a vicious wave of ethnic violence perpetrated by Arab militias. “I helped everybody who knocked on my door,” Mukhtar said. “I didn’t know the majority of them.” The name is a pseudonym – he said if his real name was used his life and those of his relatives would be in danger. Over the course of last year, after the outbreak of war in Sudan in April, hundreds of thousands of Masalit people fled from Geneina and the wider West Darfur state into Chad. The war, pitting the Arab paramilitary group the …

Sudan’s Horrific War Is Being Fueled by Weapons From Foreign Supporters of Rival Generals, UN Says

Sudan’s Horrific War Is Being Fueled by Weapons From Foreign Supporters of Rival Generals, UN Says

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The year-old war in Sudan between rival generals vying for power has sparked “a crisis of epic proportions” fueled by weapons from foreign supporters who continue to flout U.N. sanctions aimed at helping end the conflict, the U.N. political chief said Friday. “This is illegal, it is immoral, and it must stop,” Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo told the U.N. Security Council. Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo broke out into street battles in the capital, Khartoum. Fighting has spread to other parts of the country, especially urban areas and the western Darfur region. DiCarlo painted a dire picture of the war’s impact — over 14,000 dead, tens of thousands wounded, looming famine with 25 million people in need of life-saving assistance, and over 8.6 million forced to flee their homes. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, chair of the African Union panel on Sudan and high representative for its Silence the …

Inside South Sudan’s worsening refugee crisis – in pictures | Global development

Inside South Sudan’s worsening refugee crisis – in pictures | Global development

As the war in Sudan moves into its second year, 1,000 refugees a day continue to cross its southern border. Within the small town of Renk in South Sudan, a rapidly growing refugee population faces desperate shortages of water, food and shelter. For many, South Sudan marks a return to a land they thought they had left behind, having fled the country after civil war broke out in 2013. Now new fighting in their adopted country has forced them back again Source link

UK Foreign Office holding secret talks with Sudan’s RSF paramilitary group | Global development

UK Foreign Office holding secret talks with Sudan’s RSF paramilitary group | Global development

Foreign Office officials are holding secret talks with the paramilitary group that has been waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Sudan for the past year. News that the British government and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are engaged in clandestine negotiations has prompted warnings that such talks risk legitimising the notorious militia – which continues to commit multiple war crimes – while undermining Britain’s moral credibility in the region. One human rights group described the UK’s willingness to negotiate with the RSF as “shocking”. In December, the US accused the paramilitary force of committing crimes against humanity as it carries out widespread massacres and rapes of civilians, many from the African Masalit ethnic community. The revelations come as the war between the RSF and Sudan’s military reaches its first anniversary on Monday. Q&A What is happening in Sudan? Show Fighting broke out in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, on 15 April 2023 as an escalating power struggle between the two main factions of the military regime finally turned deadly.  On one side are the Sudanese armed …

Sudan’s Rival Factions Wage War While World Ignores Civilian Plight, UN Says

Sudan’s Rival Factions Wage War While World Ignores Civilian Plight, UN Says

GENEVA —  A United Nations report finds nearly 11 months of conflict in Sudan has resulted in mass killings, displacement, destruction of property and rampant human rights violations that have caused immeasurable harm and distress to millions of people, whose plight has been all but forgotten by the rest of the world. “The crisis in Sudan is a tragedy that appears to have slipped into the fog of global amnesia,” Volker Turk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said during an interactive dialogue on the situation in Sudan at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday. Turk presented a blistering and bleak assessment of life in Sudan since rival generals of the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces plunged the country into “a ruthless, senseless conflict” on April 15. “They have manufactured a climate of sheer terror, forcing millions to flee,” he said. “And they have consistently acted with impunity and a distinct lack of accountability for the multiple violations that have been committed.” He said the report highlights a range of gross …