Human Rights Watch Calls for Urgent International Intervention to Prevent Militia from Committing Atrocities

Sudan Events – Agencies

Human Rights Watch has called for urgent international intervention against the Rapid Support Militia (RSF) to prevent atrocities in North Darfur.
The organization urged the United Nations and the African Union to send a peacekeeping mission in Darfur, whose mission is to protect civilians, monitor violations of human rights and humanitarian law, and lay the foundation for the safe return of the displaced.
Belkis Wali, co-director of the Crises, Conflicts and Weapons Department, warned that the fall of the city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which has been besieged by the RSF militia and armed groups allied with it for months, could “lead to another wave of killings.”
The Co-directorsaid that this is happening in the complete absence of the United Nations or any other international or regional presence whose mission is to protect the civilian population there.
The organization noted that the RSF and its affiliated armed groups “have already killed thousands of people, most of them Masalit, in El Geneina in West Darfur and its surrounding areas, forcing more than half a million people, most of them Masalit, to flee to neighboring Chad.”
She added that the danger now lies in targeting hundreds of thousands of displaced people fleeing violence elsewhere in Darfur, who are taking refuge in El Fasher.