Sudanese refugee sits under a mosquito net inside her shelter at the Tine transit camp in Chad on November 8, 2025. With the last army stronghold in Sudan’s western Darfur region having fallen to paramilitary forces on October 26, the United Nations expects a mass influx of refugees, but it is unclear how many will actually make it to neighbouring Chad. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fighting a brutal war with Sudan’s army for more than two years, claimed full control of El Fasher, having besieged the capital of North Darfur state for nearly 18 months, causing countless thousands of people to flee. (Photo credit: JORIS BOLOMEY/AFP via Getty Images)
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On November 14, 2025, the UN Human Rights Council held a special session on the human rights situation in and around El Fasher, Sudan, and adopted (without a vote) a resolution in which it requested the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan to conduct an urgent inquiry into the alleged violations of international law committed there. The special session and resolution follow the escalating violence and reported atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and associated forces in and around El Fasher, following the takeover of the city, including ethnically motivated killings, torture, summary executions, and widespread use of sexual and gender-based violence as a weapon of warfare. The Council requested the Fact-Finding Mission to identify, where possible, all those responsible for alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law and to support accountability efforts.
On October 26, 2025, after some eighteen months of siege, El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, fell to the paramilitary RSF, following days of bombardment and the withdrawal of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and allied groups. The takeover of El Fasher is said to have unleashed atrocity crimes, including targeted ethnic violence, extrajudicial killings and executions. Some of these alleged crimes will likely amount to international crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide.
Speaking at the special session, Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, stressed that “The atrocities that are unfolding in El Fasher were foreseen and preventable – but they were not prevented. They constitute the gravest of crimes.” Together with his office, he issued more than 20 statements on El Fasher alone over the past year, based on information verified by his team. As he added, “We warned repeatedly about the strangulating, suffocating siege, under which people were reduced to eating animal feed and peanut shells. We warned about the spread of famine, as people starved to death. And we warned that the fall of the city to the Rapid Support Forces would result in a bloodbath. So none of us should be surprised by reports that since the RSF took control of El Fasher, there have been mass killings of civilians; ethnically targeted executions; sexual violence, including gang rape; abductions for ransom; widespread arbitrary detentions; attacks on health facilities, medical staff and humanitarian workers; and other appalling atrocities. But our wake-up calls were not heeded.”
High Commissioner Volker Türk further added that the international community has a clear duty to act. He called upon the States and the International community as a whole to take action to prevent continued large-scale human rights violations, often ethnically motivated, whether in Darfur and beyond. He further called to ensure that civilians from El Fasher and the surrounding areas are provided with humanitarian aid.
Adama Dieng, Special Envoy of the African Union on the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities, demanded an immediate end to the flow of weapons and fighters into Sudan. As he explained, this directly contributes to the systematic targeting of specific identity groups and requires an urgent response.
Mona Rishmawi, a member of the Fact-Finding Mission, warned that much of El Fasher was now a crime scene. She added that the horrors unfolding in El Fasher could have been prevented, as they were the direct result of decades of impunity: “They could, and must, be now stopped. Those who backed, financed and armed this machinery of brutality had the power – and the duty – to halt it. The individuals and entities behind these crimes needed to face justice.”
In accordance with the resolution, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is to present an oral update to the Council on the human rights situation in El Fasher before its sixty-first session. While the report will document and analyze the atrocities, and make recommendations, the crimes will continue until States and the International community act. As the genocide in Darfur continues, the inaction makes all States in violation of their duties under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or the Genocide Convention, a convention which imposed the duty to prevent and punish genocide.