Photos: Semafor Africa\YouTube Screenshots
Sudan’s government has rejected a United Nations recommendation for the creation of an “independent and impartial” force to protect civilians caught up in the country’s civil war.
UN experts said on Friday that both sides in the war — the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — were responsible for human rights abuses “which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” They called for the deployment of the independent force “without delay” as well as the expansion of an existing arms embargo in Darfur to all of Sudan.
Sudan’s foreign ministry said the government rejected the recommendations “in their entirety.”
More than 8 million people have been internally displaced since fighting broke out in April 2023, the experts said. Another 2 million people have fled to neighboring countries, and more than 25 million people face acute food shortages.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during a visit to Sudan on Sunday, said the war had killed at least 20,000 people.
“The scale of the emergency is shocking,” he said, “as is the insufficient action being taken to curtail the conflict and respond to the suffering it is causing.”
