Ethnic attacks, hate speech surging in Sudan, UN rights office says

GENEVA — 

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned on Friday that Sudanese civilians were in greater peril than ever as ethnically motivated attacks and hate speech by the warring parties becomes “increasingly common.”

“As the Sudanese Armed Forces [SAF] and Rapid Support Forces [RSF] battle for control at all costs in the senseless war that [has] raged for close to two years now, direct and ethnically motivated attacks on civilians are becoming increasingly common,” he said in a statement.

“The situation for civilians in Sudan is already desperate, and there is evidence of the commission of war crimes and other atrocity crimes,” Türk said. “I fear the situation is now taking a further, even more dangerous turn.”

Since the rival forces and generals went to war in mid-April 2023, the United Nations has said, more than 24,000 people have been killed and more than 14 million have been displaced — 11 million inside the country and over 3 million as refugees in neighboring countries.

Widespread hunger

The World Food Program has reported that nearly 24.6 million people — nearly half the population — suffer from acute hunger and an estimated 1.5 million are on the verge of famine. The World Health Organization has said around 90% of health facilities are not functional, and that cholera, malaria, dengue and measles have been reported in over 12 states.

“This is an extremely dire situation which deserves all the attention it can get to put whatever pressure the international community can to bring this conflict to an end,” Türk’s spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, told journalists Friday at a briefing in Geneva.

In the last week alone, she said, the U.N. Human Rights Office documented at least 21 deaths in two attacks in Al Jazirah state, “although the actual numbers of attacks directed at civilians and of civilians killed are very likely much higher.”

“The reason why we felt we had to speak out today is because of reports of an imminent battle for Khartoum,” she said. “We are worried about the kinds of violations that we may see as the parties to the conflict battle for control at all costs for Khartoum, and we are worried that this is taking us further away from peace and further into a horrific situation for civilians.”

Türk expressed concern about retaliatory attacks of “shocking brutality” on entire communities based on real or perceived ethnic identity and hate speech, which he said were on the rise and were acting as “an incitement to violence.”

“This must, urgently, be brought to an end,” he said.

Shamdasani reported that the human rights office has received three videos that document scenes of violence, including summary executions that were hailed by perpetrators as “a cleaning operation.” The victims were referred to as animals and dirt before being killed.

"The videos reportedly were filmed in Wad Madani with men in SAF uniforms visibly present,” the spokesperson said.

“Serious concerns also persist for civilians in North Darfur, where ethnically motivated attacks by the RSF and its allied Arab militias against African ethnic groups, particularly the Zaghawa and Fur, continue to exact a horrific toll,” she said.

Effects on neighbors

Aid workers in the region have reported that the multiplying horrors of the war in Sudan are having serious effects on neighboring countries, particularly South Sudan.

Speaking from the South Sudanese capital, Juba, Florence Gillette, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in South Sudan, said ICRC’s mobile surgical team in the town of Renk had treated more than 230 patients wounded by weapons in just one month.

She said more than 120,000 people from Sudan had fled to South Sudan since early December — this on top of 800,000 people who already had sought safety in South Sudan since the war began.

“Dozens of them, wounded by the violence, have required urgent medical care by ICRC doctors,” she said.

“The ongoing influx of Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese returnees is straining resources throughout Renk communities,” she said. “This is particularly worrying as South Sudan continues to face a cholera outbreak with more than 20,000 cases recorded in the country so far.”

Meanwhile, Türk renewed his call for both warring parties to abide by international humanitarian and human rights law. “Attacks must never be directed against civilians,” he said

Arms embargo

Shamdasani said the high commissioner also was calling on all states to abide by a U.N. arms embargo and “to refrain from providing all types of military support in Sudan.”

Just as nations fail to abide by the U.N. arms embargo, she acknowledged, sanctions imposed by individual countries often are not respected.

This was a reference to the United States, which declared sanctions on army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Thursday, a week after the U.S. slapped sanctions on RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Sudan’s army-aligned foreign ministry has rejected the U.S. sanctions, calling them “immoral.”

Shamdasani said her office generally opposed broad sanctions because they can damage human rights in a country. “But targeted sanctions can be effective in exerting pressure on specific individuals and organizations that are responsible for the perpetration of conflict,” she said. “So we are calling on states to use whatever measures they can, to use whatever leverage they have to pressure the parties to the conflict to bring this war to an end.”