UN chief condemns Sudan’s RSF, Britain to push for Security Council action

United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, condemned the reported civilian attacks by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, while Britain announced plans to advocate for a U.N. Security Council resolution addressing the conflict, which is now over 18 months long. According to a U.N. spokesperson, Guterres was outraged by “reports of large numbers of civilians being killed, detained and displaced, acts of sexual violence against women and girls, the looting of homes and markets and the burning of farms.”  As the conflict escalates in both duration and severity, the international community’s concerns grow, increasing the calls for urgent intervention to mitigate further suffering.

“Such acts may constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. Perpetrators of such serious violations must be held accountable,” said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. At the same time, Britain, which assumed the Security Council’s presidency in November, said that the council would meet in Sudan on November 12 to discuss “scaling up aid delivery and ensuring greater protection of civilians by all sides.”

“We will be shortly introducing a draft Security Council resolution … to drive forward progress on this,” said Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward during a press conference. Woodward stated further that such a draft would focus on “developing a compliance mechanism for the warring parties commitments they made on the protection of civilians in Jeddah over a year ago in 2023 and ways to support mediation efforts to deliver a ceasefire, even if we start local ceasefires before moving to a national one.”

The future of the resolution, however, remains uncertain, as it requires at least 9 votes in favor and no vetoes from the U.S., France, Britain, Russia, or China in order to be adopted.

The current war started in mid-April 2023, and it was caused by a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule. Reuters reported that the conflict has produced waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on the RSF. It is alleged that at least 124 people were killed in a village in El Gezira State by the RSF last month, which according to activists configured one of the conflict’s deadliest incidents. The RSF, however, has accused the army of supplying arms to civilians in Gezira. It has also previously denied harming civilians in Sudan, attributing such actions to rogue actors.

Even though, despite all the violence, people in Sudan suffer from many other factors, with hunger being the largest driver of migration from Darfur, where the UN faces difficulty delivering aid. This conflict has already triggered the world’s largest displacement crisis in its first 18 months, with more than 10 million people forced to flee their homes.

As tensions arise, Britain’s action is timely, given that the three-month approval granted by Sudanese authorities for the U.N. and aid groups to use the Adré border crossing with Chad to deliver humanitarian assistance to Darfur is set to expire in mid-November. “This is not just a matter of insufficient funding. Millions are going hungry because of access,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated.

Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed said that the government, backed by the Sudanese army, is dedicated to ensuring aid deliveries throughout the country, including in regions controlled by the RSF. However, it seems that the issue is more complicated regarding the Adre border. Mohamed said that it was noticed that thousands of mercenaries from Africa and the Sahel entered the country through Adre, which turned the border crossing issue there into a threat to national security.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia already stated that it was up to the Sudanese government to decide whether the Adre crossing would remain open beyond mid-November and that it would be “inappropriate to put pressure on” the government. However, the closure of this border may compromise the UN’s ability to provide assistance.

As Sudan’s ongoing conflict continues to present a complex humanitarian crisis, an urgent intervention from the international community becomes more and more necessary. At this point, any proposal at the Security Council needs to be strategic to ensure that humanitarian aid can have access to the region. As the U.N. Security Council and member states navigate this crisis, the need for a coordinated and decisive approach becomes more essential with each day, for the sake of both immediate relief and long-term peace in the region.

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