Sudan

Both Sudanese Government forces (SAF) and their rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are responsible for abhorrent rights violations as they battle for supremacy, the UN envoy to the country said on Wednesday. But he stressed the UN “will never stay neutral” when it comes to demanding accountability for war crimes and other human rights abuses.

Hundreds have died in ethnically motivated attacks by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militia in West Darfur, according to the UN’s human rights chief. “Such developments echo a horrific past that must not be repeated,” said Volker Türk UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, marking “five months of futile suffering, death, loss and destruction.”

The UN food security agency on Monday launched an emergency response plan to provide essential support to communities in Sudan grappling with the devastating effects of the ongoing conflict.

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir “is the only person who has intimacy and knowledge about Sudan and can find a solution to the Sudanese crisis," [Cabinet minister Martin Elia] Lomuro said on Monday after Kiir met with visiting Sudanese leader Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who arrived in the capital Juba on Monday.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and 64 humanitarian and national civil society organisations on Monday appealed for $1 billion to provide essential aid and protection to more than 1.8 million people fleeing the ongoing conflict in Sudan who are expected to arrive in five neighbouring countries by the end of 2023.

Hemedti floated the idea of a “non-symmetrical federal system” that would represent Sudan’s regional, cultural and ethnic diversity after elections to form a civilian government and end “structural violence” against broad segments of Sudanese citizens.

Thousands of people have fled their homes in the capital of South Kordofan state in Sudan after an attack by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North rebel group, one of three forces now fighting in the area. A number of armies and militias are active in Sudan’s restive southern and western regions, and the advance by the SPLMN will raise fears that the country is sliding into a full-scale civil war.

[…] New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that the RSF group apparently targeted non-Arab women and girls in the western Darfur region, as well as activists documenting human rights abuses during the conflict.

After four months of war in Sudan, UN humanitarians on Tuesday called for action to be taken to end the conflict which is having a “devastating impact” on people's lives, health and well-being.

The army has launched air attacks and fired heavy artillery since Monday, residents said, in an attempt to take control of a bridge across the River Nile used by the RSF to move reinforcements and weapons from Omdurman to the other two cities that make up the capital’s metropolitan region, Khartoum North and Khartoum.