A United Nations fact-finding mission has concluded that Sudan's Rapid Support Forces committed genocide in El Fasher, saying the paramilitary's campaign of mass killings, gang rapes and deliberate starvation amounted to an intended policy rather than a series of battlefield excesses. The mission released its findings on Wednesday and said the violence during and after the siege of the North Darfur capital met the threshold for genocide.
The report goes beyond the headline finding by describing how the violence worked on the ground. Survivors in El Fasher told investigators they were raped in rooms where bodies of recently killed civilians, including their own family members, were still lying nearby. The mission said the RSF and its allies committed the war crime of starvation by encircling the city, blocking relief supplies and shelling food production systems. A February report had already identified hallmarks of the crime, and the new findings say additional evidence confirms that the pattern was systematic.
The mission's chairman warned that the same tactics are now casting a shadow over el-Obeid, another major city where the UN human rights chief says a catastrophe is unfolding. The report points to restrictions on humanitarian access, attacks on civilian infrastructure and widespread abuses against civilians as warning signs. Members of the UN Human Rights Council have already opened an urgent inquiry into reported abuses there, as the RSF massed forces around a city of about half a million people, including more than 83,000 internally displaced residents.
The RSF has denied accusations of abuse throughout more than three years of war with Sudan's military, saying the claims are manufactured by its enemies and returning counteraccusations against them. But the UN report places the fighting in a wider legal frame, arguing that the violence was not random or accidental. It describes a deliberate campaign against civilians in Darfur and warns that the same methods could be repeated elsewhere if the international response remains slow or fragmented.
What makes the finding so serious is that genocide is a legal and political accusation that carries a far higher burden than general wartime abuse. By describing the El Fasher campaign as part of an intended policy, the mission is saying the RSF's conduct followed a pattern, not a single atrocity. That is why the chairman urged the international community to act quickly and prevent another catastrophe rather than wait for the situation in central Sudan to deteriorate further.
The report is also a warning to governments and aid agencies that Sudan's war is mutating geographically. For much of the conflict, attention focused on Khartoum and Darfur; now the violence is moving across the Kordofan region and threatening a new round of mass displacement. The mission's message is blunt: the evidence gathered in El Fasher should be treated as a guide to what could happen next if those warnings are ignored.
