The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued on Tuesday an urgent appeal for any information and evidence regarding alleged atrocities committed against the civilian population in Sudan’s Darfur region, including in El Fasher, where ongoing fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is raging.
In a video statement released Tuesday, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan called on international partners, civil society organizations and national authorities to share reliable evidence to support the ICC’s ongoing investigation into alleged rights violations and crimes in Sudan.
“I am extremely concerned about allegations of widespread international crimes being committed in El Fasher and its surrounding areas as I speak,” he said, adding that his office is currently investigating these alleged crimes “with urgency.”
Khan said the evidence collected by his team on the ground in Darfur “seems to show credible, repeated, expanding, continuous allegations of attacks against the civilian population — in particular, attacks directed against camps for internally displaced persons.”
“It seems to show the widespread, prevalent use of rape and other forms of sexual violence. It seems to disclose consistently the shelling of civilian areas, the looting of properties and attacks against hospitals,” he added, stressing that he was “particularly concerned by the ethnically motivated nature of these attacks against the Masalit and other communities.”
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announces campaign calling for information and cooperation in relation to allegations of international crimes being committed in #Darfur, Sudan, including in Al Fasher.
Info can be sent to: https://t.co/Fi3Ubn4j2P pic.twitter.com/JEhMzO6yii
— Tafiranyika (@tafimhaka) June 11, 2024
The ICC already has an active investigation, ongoing since 2005, into allegations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, in western Sudan, during the war in the 2000s.
The ICC appeal comes as the number of internally displaced people from the war has surpassed 10 million, the UN International Organization for Migration told The Associated Press on Monday.
After the war between the Sudanese army and the RSF erupted in April 2023 over a power struggle, the court further focused its probe on alleged violations being carried out by both parties against civilians.
As the fighting spread across Sudan, the situation was particularly dire in Darfur, which is still reeling from a major humanitarian crisis resulting from the bloody conflict that engulfed the region in the 2000s. In 2003, a civil war broke out between non-Arab rebels and the government.
Forces loyal to the government, including the Janjaweed militia — from which the RSF emerged — were accused of ethnic cleansing and war crimes. More than 300,000 people were killed, according to UN estimates.
“It is an outrage that we are allowing history to repeat itself once again in Darfur,” Khan warned in his Tuesday statement. “We cannot and we must not allow Darfur to become the world’s forgotten atrocity, once again.”
The recent war has created what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 8 million forced to flee their homes and UN agencies warning of an “imminent risk of famine.” While UN aid agencies estimate that more than 15,000 people have been killed in the conflict since April 2023, the United States believes the number to be as high as 150,000.
US special envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello said Tuesday that parts of Sudan are already facing famine.
“I think we know we are in a famine,” Perriello told Reuters in an interview. “I think the question is how much famine, how much of the country and for how long.”
The fighting in El Fasher, the capital city of the state of North Darfur, has escalated since April after the RSF, which controls most of Darfur, laid a siege on the city, which had been under the control of the army.
On Sunday, one of the city’s last functioning hospitals was forced to shut down after RSF fighters stormed into the facility and opened fire at medical staff and patients.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF), which supports the South Hospital in El Fasher, described the attack as “outrageous,” saying the hospital was the only one in the city equipped to handle mass casualties and one of two hospitals with surgical capacity.
“This is not an isolated incident. Staff and patients have endured attacks on the facility for weeks from all sides, but opening fire inside a hospital crosses a line,” head of MSF Emergencies Michel Lacharite said in a statement, calling on the warring sides to halt their attacks against hospitals.
Last week, RSF fighters were accused of killing more than 100 people during an attack on Wad al-Noura village in the Gezira state, in east-central Sudan.