GENEVA: The UN Human Rights Council ordered investigators on Friday to probe alleged atrocities in Sudan’s El Fasher and to seek to identify perpetrators so they can be brought to justice.

The United Nations top rights body adopted a resolution ordering the UN’s independent fact-finding mission on Sudan to urgently investigate violations in El Fasher. The text also called on the team to “identify, where possible” suspected perpetrators in a bid to ensure they are “held accountable”.

The decision came at the end of a special session called to address the situation in El Fasher, amid mounting warnings of crimes against humanity and the risk of genocide.

“Bloodstains on the ground in El Fasher have been photographed from space,” UN rights chief Volker Turk warned as he opened Friday’s session.

“The stain on the record of the international community is less visible but no less damaging.”

Since breaking out in April 2023, the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million more and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The violence has escalated dramatically in recent weeks, with the RSF seizing control of the key town of El Fasher in Sudan’s western Darfur region after an 18-month siege and reports of atrocities multiplying.

Coordinated campaign against civilians

British ambassador Kumar Iyer, whose country requested the special session along with Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway, insisted that “the scale and severity of the crisis in Sudan can no longer be met with silence”.

“The violence in El Fasher bears the hallmarks of a coordinated campaign against civilians by the Rapid Support Forces,” he said, pointing to “credible reports of actively targeted killings, systematic, sexual violence, and the deliberate use of starvation”. Before Friday’s resolution was adopted, he urged countries to greenlight the text: “Without it, accountability will remain out of reach and the cycle of impunity will continue.”

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2025