Paris-Kampala, 30 October 2025. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), together with its member organisations in Sudan (Sudanese Human Rights Monitor-SHRM and African Center for Justice and Peace Studies-ACJPS), as well as additional undersigned member organisations from across Africa and the Arab region, express grave alarm following the fall of El Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 26 October 2025, which marks a catastrophic escalation in Sudan’s ongoing conflict. After an 18-month siege that has left hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped, starving, and subjected to relentless attacks, the city’s capture has triggered widespread atrocities and raised urgent concerns about mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.
A City Under Siege: 18 Months of Devastating Violence
El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur and the last SAF stronghold in Darfur, has endured a brutal siege by the RSF since May 2024. The siege has cut off all humanitarian access for over a year, leaving approximately 260,000 civilians—half of them children—trapped without food, clean water, medical care, or safety. The United Nations (UN) World Food Programme has been unable to deliver food assistance by road for over a year, with basic food staples costing up to 460% more than in other parts of Sudan.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented an estimated 1,850 civilian deaths in North Darfur from the beginning of 2025 to 20 October, with approximately 1,350 of these deaths occurring in El Fasher. This figure is considered a significant undercount due to telecommunications blackouts and lack of access on the ground. In October alone, at least 115 civilians were killed and 102 injured in six attacks on the besieged city, including 17 children among the dead.
Evidence of Mass Atrocities and Ethnic Cleansing
Since the RSF’s capture of El Fasher on 26 October, credible reports have emerged of widespread atrocities including summary executions, house-to-house raids, attacks on civilians fleeing along escape routes, and obstacles preventing civilians from reaching safety. The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab found evidence consistent with RSF forces conducting mass killings in the city, with satellite imagery analysis revealing objects consistent with human bodies near RSF vehicles and reddish earth discoloration determined to be blood from the killings. The imagery shows RSF vehicles deployed in tactical formations consistent with house-to-house clearance operations. The fact that RSF members have documented and publicly broadcast their crimes on social media demonstrates a profound disregard for international law and a deep-seated sense of impunity.
In parallel to the unfolding events in El Fasher, the RSF carried out deadly attacks against civilians in Bara, North Kordofan State on 25–27 October 2025, immediately after the withdrawal of SAF. The events occured amid a complete communications blackout, which prevented full verification of the scale of atrocities and enabled mass executions, targeting unarmed civilians including women, children, and the elderly, along with widespread looting and torture. Both these events underscore a systematic pattern of ethnic cleansing tactics by the RSF expanding from Darfur into Kordofan.
"The fall of El Fasher, as well as the recent massacre in Bara, represents a catastrophic failure of the international community to protect civilians and prevent mass atrocities despite repeated warnings from human rights organisations, the UN, and local monitors", said Mossaad Ali, Executive Director, ACJPS. "The RSF’s systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in El Fasher must be stopped immediately. Civilians trapped in the city face imminent risk of mass killings, sexual violence, and forced displacement. The international community must move beyond statements of concern to concrete action—including accountability measures, sanctions, and mechanisms to protect civilians on the ground."
The UN Human Rights Office reports that RSF fighters have committed summary executions of civilians attempting to flee the city, with indications of ethnic motivations behind the killings. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab concluded that "El Fasher appears to be undergoing a systematic and deliberate process of ethnic cleansing targeting the Fur, Zaghawa, Berti and other non-Arab populations through forced displacement and summary executions."
Sexual violence against women and girls continues to be reported on a massive scale, with the UN reporting that the number of people at risk of gender-based violence has tripled to 12.1 million across Sudan. The last functioning maternity hospital in El Fasher has collapsed, leaving more than 6,200 pregnant women trapped without access to lifesaving sexual and reproductive health services. Medical facilities have been looted and targeted in attacks, effectively destroying the city’s essential healthcare infrastructure.
Background
The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan, in its September 2025 report "A War of Atrocities", found that both the SAF and the RSF are responsible for direct and large-scale attacks against civilians and extensive destruction of essential infrastructure. The Mission found that the RSF committed myriad crimes against humanity during the siege of El Fasher, including murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, forced displacement, and persecution on ethnic, gender, and political grounds.
The RSF has used starvation as a method of warfare and deprived civilians of objects indispensable to their survival—which may amount to the crime against humanity of extermination. UN human rights chief Volker Türk warned that "the risk of further large-scale, ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in El Fasher is mounting by the day."
The conflict between the SAF and the RSF, which erupted in April 2023, has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes. More than 150,000 people have been killed, over 14 million displaced, and more than 25 million people face acute food insecurity, with famine confirmed in multiple areas.
"What we are witnessing in El Fasher is not only a humanitarian catastrophe but a deliberate campaign of terror against civilian populations", said Magdi El Na’im, Executive Director, SHRM. "The RSF has employed starvation as a weapon of war, systematically destroyed civilian infrastructure, and committed widespread atrocities including summary executions and sexual violence."
Call to Action
The international community has received repeated warnings about the risk of mass atrocities in El Fasher throughout 2025. Despite these warnings, concrete action to prevent the current catastrophe has been insufficient. The undersigned urgently call on the international community to:
– Apply urgent diplomatic pressure on all parties to immediately cease hostilities in El Fasher and across Sudan - the RSF must end all attacks on civilians, civilian infrastructure, and humanitarian workers;
– Ensure safe passage for civilians attempting to flee El Fasher and other conflict zones. All escape routes must be opened immediately, and civilians must be allowed to reach safety without obstruction, detention, or violence;
– Guarantee unhindered humanitarian access through all possible cross-border and cross-line routes. Remove all bureaucratic impediments and allow humanitarian organisations to deliver lifesaving food, water, medicine, and other essential supplies to trapped populations;
– Convene an urgent UN Security Council meeting to enforce existing resolution 2736 (2024), which demands that the RSF lift the siege of El Fasher; invite the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission to brief Council members; adopt a strong resolution to address the current escalation of atrocities in El Fasher, including by considering additional targeted sanctions against RSF leadership responsible for atrocities and mandating concrete civilian protection mechanisms beyond statements of concern;
– Reinforce scrutiny at international and regional human rights fora, including by ensuring that both the ACHPR and the UN Fact-Finding Mission have adequate resources and staff to continue their critical work documenting human rights abuses - Sudan and neighboring countries must grant immediate and unrestricted access to the ACHPR and the UNFFM to facilitate thorough investigations;
– Support the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigations and prosecutions of crimes under international law committed in Sudan. Furthermore, renew the call for the ICC Prosecutor to accelerate and broaden investigations and issue arrest warrants not only for RSF and military leaders but also for all individuals proven to have planned, financed, armed, or otherwise supported these crimes;
– Apply targeted sanctions against individuals and entities responsible for atrocities, including RSF leadership (notably Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and Abdul Rahim Dagalo), and those enabling the continuation of violence, especially the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has been repeatedly documented as the RSF’s main source of weapons and financial backing in violation of UN arms embargoes;
– Scale up urgent funding to enable lifesaving assistance for those trapped in El Fasher and civilians fleeing to surrounding areas. Support local Emergency Response Rooms and civil society organizations working on the ground to protect human rights, provide relief, and document atrocities.
The people of Sudan cannot afford further delays or half-measures. Urgent, decisive, and coordinated international action is required now to protect civilians, enable humanitarian access, and ensure accountability for the grave crimes being committed in El Fasher and across Sudan. Continued impunity for earlier crimes — in Geneina, Zalingei, El Gezira, Khartoum, East Gezira, Sennar, Blue Nile, and other regions — has created the conditions for new and escalating atrocities, including in El Fasher and Bara. Any further inaction will be interpreted as an implicit mandate for even greater mass killings.