Sudan: A Forgotten Genocide

Mohammad Alkhateeb

Background

Sudan, in all the misery imposed upon its population, is a story which vindicates the statement that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The world had looked away from the imminent genocide in the early 1990’s in Rwanda, so too is our world today with regard to Sudan.

The world’s gaze had been noticeably absent in Kigali where, in 1994, 800,000 people were killed in a vicious civil war, which had been deemed a genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (IRMCT).[1] The world had failed to prevent a genocide then, today the people of Darfur (a region of South-West Sudan) and those who had sought refuge in its town of El Fasher, could find little solace in global public opinion or international action.

‘There was no place for rogue militias in the Sudan we dreamed of at the sit-in in 2019. They stole that future from us, and now they are erasing our past’ wrote Dena Ibrahim, having been born and raised in Sudan, now grieving for her family’s human and proprietary losses, but also their national plight.

What is Genocide?

Our common understanding of the term is primarily rooted in our moral interpretation of it, and it is therefore often politicised and subjective. The law, embodied in the Genocide Convention [2], is far more pragmatic, providing that ‘genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law…’., further stating that ‘genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’.

As with most crimes, genocide is formed of the act element (actus reus) and mental element (mens rea). A crime is deemed proven when the act has been proven to be committed, and the required state of mind is proven to have existed (eg. Intention, recklessness…). This means that, to establish that a genocide has in fact been committed, it must be demonstrated that the accused committed one of the acts detailed in the Convention, but it also must be proven that this act was committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial or religious group.

As a signatory and ratifier of the Genocide Convention, Sudan is bound by its terms. The competent authority to try any matter relating to the Convention is the International Court of Justice (ICJ) because the text is a United Nations Convention and the ICJ is the UN’s judicial body. However, for the ICJ to hear a case, a UN member state must bring the case to the court and initially request preliminary measures [3], before the case can be heard in full, which can take a number of years. This is highly unlikely in this context, because the Sudanese state is not in this case the alleged [4] perpetrator of the possible genocide, and the state cannot bring actions against a non-state actor within the context of the ICJ process.

Former Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir was indicted [5] by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for international crimes. The Rome Statute [6] adopted the same definition and standards for genocide set by the Convention.[7] Although Sudan is not a state party to the Rome statute and therefore not fundamentally within the ICC’s jurisdiction [8], in 2005 the UN Security Council had referred the then unfolding situation in Sudan to the ICC. Although unlikely for political reasons today, this remains a technical possibility. As the ICC prosecutes individuals for the four international crimes [9], including that of Genocide, the ICC would, in theory, be best placed to investigate allegations of Genocide in Darfur. The obstacles relating to the perpetrators not being a state do not apply at the ICC, as the ICC investigates, prosecutes and tries individuals rather than states.

In the News

Since 2023, a civil war, which began as a popular uprising in 2019 against President Al Bashir and his thirty year rule, has been unfolding in Sudan. Since Al Bashir’s departure, Sudan has been locked in a cycle of violence which has transcended into the commission of numerous crimes against the Sudanese population. The protests had led to the arrival to power of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), initially collaborators that filled a power vacuum, now at war with one another.

A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated in November 2023 that ‘ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity[10] have been committed against ethnic Massalit[11] and non-Arab communities’ by the RSF in Darfur. The report compiled evidence of the RSF and allied militias undertaking a ‘systematic campaign…to remove Massalit residents from El Geneina’. The Massalit, Zaghawa and Fur people of Sudan are Non-Arab people and citizens of Sudan. They have all been, and still remain, targets of the RSF.

When taking El Geneina (another town in the Darfur region), the RSF and allied militias committed atrocities such as ‘mass rape, child murder and massacres of civilians’. Dena Ibrahim speaks of ‘summary executions, torture and rape’. Following a 500 day siege on El Fasher, which had been the only remaining territory in Darfur and in the Western Region of Sudan that was not under the control of the RSF, El Fasher fell to the RSF in October 2025.

The people of El Fasher, and persons taking refuge in the city, have been subjected to home raids, arbitrary detentions and summary executions. The storming of the city had led to the killing of 500 people at the Saudi Maternity Hospital. Survivors have described groups of men being beaten and shot, others being taken as hostages, female survivors recount being subjected to sexual violence along with their daughters. These are allegations indicating a severe state of human suffering including the commission of war crimes.

El Geneina

A HRW Report in May 2024 described the alleged crimes committed in El Geneina. It does not make a claim of genocide, but one of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Report does however submit that ethnic cleansing has taken place in El Geneina. Genocide is a defined term of law, whilst ethnic cleansing is a subjective and approximative term of art which ‘defies easy definition’ and ‘merges with deportation and genocide’.

The RSF’s actions in El Geneina entailed the looting of civilian property, assaults and unlawful detentions, none of which are essential components of the crime of genocide. The Report does however document the targeting of a particular ethnic group (‘Massalit people and other non-Arab communities’), with the aim of ‘at least having them permanently leave the region’. El Geneina has equally witnessed ‘mass killings of ethnic Massalit civilians’.

RSF takes El Fasher

Intent can either be expressed in words or implied through conduct and circumstance. El Fasher was, until October 2025, the only remaining territory in Darfur and in the Western Region that had not been taken by the RSF, with all surrounding cities and territories under the militia’s direct control. With El Fasher having been the SAF’s last stronghold in Darfur, there was no prospect of safe havens for the targeted non-Arab people to seek refuge in the event of an exodus from El Fasher. The targeting of El Fasher illustrates the existence of an intention by the RSF to leave no place for the non-Arab population to remain safe, and the short and long term histories of the militia’s encounters with those populations clearly shows that they target them in every territory they acquire, forcing them to flee to other parts of the country, committing atrocities against them or killing them.

With the absence of an alternative safe haven, the intention to kill is demonstrated.

It is on that basis that a genocide was predicted throughout the siege of El Fasher, indeed history shows us that the RSF has on every occasion denied the non-Arab Darfurians the opportunity to remain in a given territory peacefully, and there is now no place for them to take refuge. The events since the RSF’s advance on El Fasher have vindicated an intent to commit genocide. Human Rights Representative, Li Fung, stated that ‘Hundreds have been killed, including women, children and the wounded, who sought safety in hospitals and schools, entire families were cut down as they fled. Others have simply vanished’. During the siege on El Fasher, an intent to commit an imminent genocide could be predicted, due to El Fasher’s position as the last semblance of safety for the non-Arab people.

The events since El Fasher’s capture have demonstrated this intent through conduct, in that the RSF had gone to the extent of killing people who were attempting to escape, and who presented no danger to the RSF or to the territory which they had come to acquire. This means that the RSF’s siege of El Fasher and efforts to capture the city were not merely a pursuit of territory and ethnic cleansing or mere eviction (although this may be a war crime that falls short of genocide), but had in fact actively and unnecessarily pursued the killing of Non-Arab People, driven by a demonstrated intention to kill. Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab found evidence of mass killings, which included pools of blood visible through satellite imagery. It is believed that 2,000 people have been killed in El Fasher in October 2025.

On this basis, it can be said that the scale of the killing and the identities of the persons targeted in such killings, being calculated and discriminate on the basis of identity, is one which fulfills the act element of genocide. The actions preceding the fall of El Fasher had indicated a long-standing intention to commit genocide.

Final Thoughts

It had been evident for some time that the RSF possessed the intention to commit genocide, but had been unable to act on the existing intent. The nature of the case, particularly where it concerns the identity of the alleged perpetrators, does not satisfy the requirements for ICJ juridiction. The only prospect of judicial intervention would be for swift action to be brought by the ICC, or a special tribunal. This is more likely to occur when the arms are laid down or the SAF is militarily victorious, as judicial intervention is unlikely to change the facts on the ground in Sudan today.

It is clear, given that the acts have been committed, which have included killing members of the non-Arab groups of Sudan, the causing of serious bodily and mental harm and the imposition of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the non-Arab people, as coupled with the intention to destroy these ethnic groups, that the crime of genocide has been committed against the non-Arab people of Darfur.

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[1] Now the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals

[2] The Convention is an international treaty, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, defining genocide and obligating signatory states to prevent and punish acts amounting to genocide.

[3] Preliminary measures are enacted by the ICJ following initial hearings, they are temporary and legally binding orders made by the court, intended to preserve the rights of the parties involved in the case and prevent irreversible harm.

[4] The term ‘alleged’ stems from the word ‘allegation’. It is used when a person is accused of having committed an act, usually a criminal act, but the accusation has not been proven or confirmed by a court of law.

[5] The verb ‘indicted’ stems from the legal term ‘indictment’. This means that a person has been taken to court for a criminal matter, and that there has been a list of charges (indictment) which details the criminal acts which the person has been accused of, but have not yet been proven.

[6] The Rome Statute is the legal text founding the International Criminal Court, setting out its jurisdiction and elaborating the definitions and mechanisms for international crimes.

[7] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 6

[8] Jurisdiction, in the context of a court, is the authority or power of a court to hear and determine a matter, this can include factors such as location, time, nature of the facts, identity or nature of the parties…

[9] The Crime of Aggression, War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and the Crime of Genocide.

[10] Crimes against humanity are crimes committed in the course of large scale attacks orchestrated against civilians. Those crimes include murder of two or more persons, extermination, deportation or forcible transfer, false imprisonment, torture, rape or other such crimes committed in attacks on a a group of civilians.

[11] The Massalit are a non-Arab ethnic group that live in parts of Western Sudan and Chad. They speak their own language (Masarak) which distinguishes them from the Arabic-speaking majority in Sudan.