All Eyes on Sudan (too)

In a world increasingly guided by the logic of the attention economy, the sufferings of different peoples are frequently pitted against each other in direct competition. Whataboutery takes centre stage and attempts at simplification run the risk of erasing the complexity of the underlying causes that lead to such violence in the first place, and its consequences. This article is an attempt to add layers to the discussions of ongoing mass atrocities committed in several parts of the world by discussing an under-reported situation of large scale violence unfolding in Sudan since April 2023, in the hope that the ‘international community’ can address multiple catastrophic situations with similar urgency, mobilise for justice for all peoples, end the culture of impunity, and eventually shift the discourse towards the structural causes of such large-scale violence in different parts of the world.

 The Context

Sudan is experiencing its latest escalation of violence and humanitarian catastrophe since April 2023, against the backdrop of a conflict driven by disputes over power sharing, and land related issues, exacerbated by political and ethnic tensions. On the one side are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias (mainly from Darfuri Arab groups) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo also known as Hemedti. On the other is the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which has recently been joined by factions that initially positioned themselves as neutral, including the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM-MM) and Jibril Ibrahim, aligned to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler.

Without a formal head of state, Sudan’s federal government is led by a ‘Sovereignty Council’ mainly consisting of military officers and some former rebel leaders who signed the Juba Peace Agreement with the government in 2020 along with other sympathisers of Al Burhan.

Hemedti’s paramilitary group was created by the former head of state, Omar al-Bashir in the early 2000’s to help crush the rebellion in the country’s western Darfur region, then colloquially referred to as the ‘Janjaweed’. The ongoing hostilities can be traced back to the conflict of the early 2000s – an outcome of tensions over resources between non-Arab farming communities—including the Massalit, Fur and Zaghawa, who claimed a historical right to the land in El Geneina—and Arab pastoralist communities.

The conflict had a devastating impact on the civilian population of Darfur in 2000s. It is estimated that around 300,000 people lost their lives, and millions were displaced, including 400,000 refugees who were forced to flee to camps in neighbouring Chad. In response to these atrocities, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against several Sudanese senior officials, including Omar al-Bashir, on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. While Al-Bashir and four others are yet to be arrested, Ali Kushyab is being prosecuted at the ICC.

International Crimes in Question

RSF has reportedly been waging a systematic campaign against the ethnic Massalit community, which predominantly inhabits El Geneina, the largest town in the Darfur region, since April 2023. Their actions have included killings, deliberate looting, burning of neighbourhoods, targeted attacks on sites where Massalit IDPs have been living since the 2000s, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people are reported to have been killed since the violence began last year.

In June 2023, the governor of West Darfur Khamis Abbakar, who was also considered the de facto leader of the Massalit communities, was allegedly killed by the RSF which further intensifying the tensions and triggering a mass exodus to neighbouring countries, including Chad, Egypt and South Sudan. According to the Sudan Mobility Update, the number of protracted and new IDPs has risen to nearly 10 million people, while the number of refugee outflows has reached approximately 2.1 million by the end of May 2024.

There are reasonable grounds to believe that serious violations of international humanitarian law have been committed over the past 14 months, including the killing of civilians by indiscriminate shelling and aerial bombing in highlight populated areas and attacks on crucial civilian infrastructure (from both parties), arbitrary arrests, detentions and torture, conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence (particularly Massalit women have been systematically targeted because of their ethnicity) in the IDP camps, mass displacement, and the recruitment of child soldiers.

Some of these violations, particularly sexual and gender-based violence by RSF, may also constitute crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute. Non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch, based on extensive research and interviews with victims and witnesses in Sudan, have alleged RSF’s targeting of Massalit people and other non-Arab communities, such as the Zaghawa and Fur, with the apparent aim of at least having them permanently leave the region constitutes ethnic cleansing.

While the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ is frequently used to emphasise the severity and the systematic nature of the targeting of a particular community, it is not recognised as a crime under international law as such. However, there have been attempts to define it as ‘a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas’. The lack of an agreed definition of the crime however does not imply a lack of criminality. Such criminal conduct could either qualify as a crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer of population, or if it meets the relatively high threshold of ‘specific intent to destroy the group in whole or in part’ it could also potentially constitute the crime of genocide.

Another element of criminality that does not receive sufficient attention is the starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. Fourteen areas, including Greater Darfur and Khartoum regions, in the country are at risk of famine. The use of tactics that completely isolate households from access to food assistance, community support, and remittances expose people to worsening levels of starvation, acute malnutrition, and hunger-related mortality, around 755,000 people already face ‘catastrophe’ (famine conditions).  It must be noted that children, pregnant women, and new mothers are particularly vulnerable in such situations. While Sudan has a history of food shortages and famines, it is clear that the imminent famine is directly linked to the ongoing conflict and the decisions made by two warring factions.

Starvation of civilians as a weapon of war has never been prosecuted by an international court before (the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC has applied for arrest warrants on the basis of, inter alia, starvation crimes in the Gaza situation for the first time in May 2024). Despite the frequent use of starvation as a method of warfare, this lack of accountability can be attributed to reasons such as procedural and evidentiary hurdles, and multiplicity of factors that lead to a famine. However, the collective and particularly slow nature of this conduct requires urgent attention – both in terms of aid and accountability.

The International Criminal Court and Sudan

Since July 2023, the ICC has initiated investigations into the recent crimes in Darfur deriving mandate from United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1593 (2005). Sudan is not a state party to the ICC but the UNSC has referred the situations in Darfur since 1 July 2002 to the Prosecutor of the ICC. Not just the fact that the ICC jurisdiction came from a UNSC referral but also the arrest warrants against a sitting head of the state, Al-Bashir, made Sudan a critical point in the relationship of African states with the ICC, and the political baggage of this referral is expected to loom large in the new situation as well.

A major stumbling block here will be whether the ICC has continued jurisdiction over crimes taking place now, given that the UNSC resolution stems from the earlier conflict under the leadership of Omar al-Bashir, and that conflict formally ended with the signing of the Juba Peace Agreement in 2020. It can be argued that the Resolution does not set a clear temporal limit, only a geographic one, i.e. crimes committed in the Darfur region. However, in order to prosecute recent crimes, the Prosecutor will have to prove that the current situation is sufficiently linked to the situation of crisis at the time of the referral.

On a more practical level, an even greater obstacle in the ICC’s pursuit of accountability for recent crimes in Sudan appears to be the lack of access to documentation and evidence of crimes, given the Prosecutor’s recent open appeal for assistance in gathering war crimes in Sudan.

Conclusion

The ICC is just one tool among many needed to address the ongoing crisis. Political responses in the form of the Jeddah talks, the EU conference in April this year, and the UN Fact Finding Mission remain woefully ineffective and inadequate given the extreme violence unfolding in Sudan. Immediate concerted action from multiple actors is essential to prevent further escalation of hostilities, deliver humanitarian aid to millions on the brink of starvation, and document ongoing violations for future accountability at both international and domestic levels.