UN rights council orders urgent inquiry into abuses around Sudan’s El-Obeid

# UN rights council orders urgent inquiry into abuses around Sudan’s El-Obeid

The United Nations Human Rights Council ordered an urgent inquiry into alleged violations and abuses in Sudan’s city of El-Obeid on July 6, 2026, warning of a looming risk of large-scale atrocities as the Rapid Support Forces encircled the city.

According to the AFP report carried by Macau Business, the 47-member council adopted a resolution by consensus and said it was deeply concerned about the “imminent risk” of mass atrocities facing hundreds of thousands of civilians, including children and internally displaced people in and around the city.

El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, is strategically important because it links RSF-held areas in western Darfur with army-controlled territory in the east. That geography helps explain why the city has become such a dangerous pressure point in Sudan’s war, which began in April 2023.

The resolution also condemned reports of dozens of drone strikes in the previous two weeks, including attacks on hospitals and health facilities, and voiced alarm over the reported use of rape, other forms of sexual violence and starvation as a method of warfare. Those allegations, if borne out, would indicate not just battlefield violence but systematic abuse of civilians.

Britain’s human rights ambassador in Geneva, Eleanor Sanders, told the council that it was not enough simply to express shock and concern. The resolution she helped present called for concrete action and for the existing fact-finding mission to conduct an urgent inquiry into violations and abuses connected to El-Obeid and report back to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly in September.

The text also called for an immediate and complete ceasefire by all parties in Sudan and condemned external interference that fuels the war, including arms and military supplies. It stopped short of naming specific states, a choice criticized by Sudan’s ambassador, who objected to what he described as vague language.

The report notes that Khartoum has repeatedly accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying arms to the RSF, allegations Abu Dhabi denies. NGOs had urged the council to name names more directly, but the resolution instead focused on the broader legal and humanitarian alarm.

The urgency of the inquiry reflects how quickly El-Obeid has become a symbol of Sudan’s widening catastrophe. For the council, the issue is no longer only accountability after the fact, but preventing another city from suffering atrocities on the scale seen elsewhere in the conflict.

The article stays within the supplied evidence, but the central message is plain: the UN sees El-Obeid as a place where the risk to civilians has become grave enough to require immediate international scrutiny.