The investigations will look into all alleged human rights violations in the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The UN has started investigations into human rights and international humanitarian law violations in the nine-month civil war that has devastated Sudan, killing at least 12,000 people and displacing millions.
“Sudanese civil society organisations and other interlocutors have started sharing allegations of ongoing serious violations with us,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the Fact-Finding Mission.
“These allegations underscore the importance of accountability, the necessity of our investigations, and the vital need for the violence to end immediately,” Othman added.
Othman, a former chief justice of Tanzania, is joined by Joy Ezeilo, emeritus dean of law at the University of Nigeria, and Mona Rishmawi of Jordan and Switzerland, a former UN independent expert on human rights in Somalia.
'Legal obligations'
"The warring parties have international legal obligations to protect civilians from attacks, guarantee humanitarian access and refrain from murders, forced displacement, torture, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances under any circumstances," Rishmawi said.
"We will carefully verify all allegations received and carry out our fact-finding independently and impartially."
The investigations will look into all alleged human rights violations in the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and other warring parties since the start of the war on April 15, 2023.
Joy Ezeilo said the mission will ‘’pay particular attention to violations targeting women and children.’’
Invitation to share evidence
“Allegations of rapes targeting mainly women and girls and the alleged recruitment of children for use in hostilities are among the priority concerns for our investigations,” Ezeilo said.
The UN urged all parties to the conflict to cooperate with their investigations and asked individuals, groups, and organisations to confidentially share evidence on human rights violations in Sudan in the period under review.
The fact-finding team says an oral update on its initial findings will be presented to the Human Rights Council’s fifty-sixth session in June–July 2024, followed by a written report to the Council’s fifty-seventh session in September–October and the UN General Assembly at its seventy-ninth session in October 2024.
More than 13,000 people have been killed since the war began in April, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and the United Nations says more than seven million people have been displaced.
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