Sudan: UN Rights Chief shocked by survivor experiences

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Volker Türk, has been left shocked by the experiences described by survivors of Sudan’s civil war, as reported by Africa News via AP on January 19th.

While touring Sudan, Türk met families displaced by the ongoing conflict between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023; this was Türk’s first official visit to Sudan since November 2022.

He met with families displaced from areas under RSF control in the city of El-Fasher, the state capital of Sudan’s North Darfur region, which had been under an RSF-imposed siege since April 2024.

Speaking during his visit, Türk described being deeply shaken by the testimonies of survivors, particularly women and girls who recounted being subjected to sexual abuse as a weapon of war.

According to Türk, he met nine survivors who shared what he called “horrific stories”, such as women who experienced gang rape as they attempted to flee the violence in El-Fasher, while their male relatives, including brothers and sons, were taken away and shot in front of them.

It was reported in December 2024 that anti-government militias, including the RSF, were accused of sexual violence against women and girls, such as gang rapes and sexual slavery.

Furthermore, the UN estimated that since early 2024, more than 200 children were raped as a tactic of war in Sudan, with the victims including boys, girls and babies as young as one year old.

Similarly, the UN warned in June 2025 that the risk of genocide occurring in Sudan was “very high”, amid reports of ethnically-motivated violence being perpetrated by RSF fighters, particularly in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

Darfur’s inhabitants had previously faced genocidal violence between August 2003 and March 2004, when Janjaweed (“Devils on horseback”) militias committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the region’s non-Arab Sudanese residents.

The UN estimated that around 300,000 people were killed between 2003 and 2004 in ethnically-motivated violence, while a further 2.5 million were displaced

Some believe the RSF are the Janjaweed’s successors, who committed atrocities against ethnic Africans who sought to end systematic racial oppression and centralised power by the Arab-Sudanese government.

Since April 2023, Sudan’s civil war has killed at least 40,000 people, while a further 13 million have been displaced from their homes. Additionally, key infrastructure, such as clean water supplies, has been damaged by the conflict, leading to the spread of disease and worsening humanitarian conditions.

Africa News via AP, Maghrebi.org