Displaced residents build temporary shelters in Tawila, North Darfur. Photo: Mohamed Elgoni/UNOCHA via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A growing number of international bodies have documented evidence of alleged atrocities in Sudan’s protracted civil war. In July, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said the court has amassed ‘concrete evidence’ linking senior commanders of the Rapid Support Force (RSF) to war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

The civil war erupted in 2023 soon after army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — known as Hemedti — who were jointly leading Sudan at the time, fell out, causing the RSF to splinter off. The war quickly expanded across regions drawing in external actors. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says the conflict between the armed forces and the RSF has displaced more than 12 million people, with famine conditions in various locations and ‘an epidemic of sexual violence’.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights separately found that the October 2025 assault killed more than 6,000 people through mass summary executions that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Together the reports describe an 18-month siege that weakened the population through starvation, deprivation, trauma and confinement. Kristin Smith is an officer of the IBA Human Rights Law Committee. ‘Some of the patterns that stood out to me,’ she says, ‘are things like destroying villages and homes to prevent civilians from returning, the pervasive use of sexual violence to terrorise civilians, restricting food and other aid, which, to use legal terms, can create conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction and killing civilians who are just trying to flee or are at protected sites like hospitals.’

Investigators for Amnesty’s recent high-profile report conclude that tactics by Hemedti’s militias created life-threatening conditions amounting to extermination and forced transfer. The report also highlights the routine use of derogatory, dehumanising language by fighters during assaults. Smith says those practices constitute evidence of persecution and that it remains 'very relevant to considering whether there’s genocidal intent, which is notoriously difficult to prove.'

Most of the other recent international reports were pieced together from harrowing survivor testimony, satellite surveillance and open-source video and they lay bare plans for slaughter that stretched from early 2024 through the RSF’s final, bloody conquest of El-Fasher and its surrounding areas, coveted for their sizeable gold reserves, in late October 2025.

In a statement posted on an RSF-affiliated Telegram channel, the group appeared to deny the accusations saying, ‘The RSF are deeply committed to protecting civilians in liberated areas, ensuring their safety and preserving their possessions as well'.

Despite investigators documenting crimes and identifying alleged perpetrators there have so far been no arrests, trials or judgments. ‘Even if you have everything else, you know who committed the crime, you have the evidence, you still have to get custody,’ says Jonathan Hafetz, Treasurer of the IBA Human Rights Law Committee. ‘But these investigative mechanisms are important in laying the foundation for prosecutions.’

Amnesty International identifies several commanders allegedly linked to serious abuses. Smith says such findings will eventually lead to justice if supported by states. 'Documentation and accountability mechanisms are a medium and long-term investment and need to be viewed that way by states and other donors in order to be effective,' she says, before adding, ‘there are significant obstacles in pursuing justice for atrocity crimes generally that are relevant to the situation in Sudan.'

On the ground investigators are locked out of conflict zones and government forces shield fugitives like ousted former President Omar Al-Bashir. Chronic funding cuts also hamper the NGOs tasked with safeguarding witness trust and physical evidence. The passage of time decays critical testimony, making prosecutions increasingly fragile.

Hafetz says that independent investigations provide the essential bridge between battlefield atrocities and individual criminal liability. 'Investigative mechanisms are important for preserving evidence, identifying perpetrators and command structures, documenting patterns of criminality and locating witnesses, especially before evidence disappears,' he says.

The ICC’s mandate in Sudan remains significantly constrained by a decades-old Security Council resolution. ‘The ICC is investigating crimes committed both in the current conflict and in prior conflicts, but its reach is limited,’ says Smith. ‘Although the office of the prosecutor has asked the Security Council to extend its mandate to cover crimes across the country, it currently only has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Darfur because Sudan is not a state party to the Rome Statute and the ICC instead got jurisdiction years ago through a previous Security Council resolution.’

Now that Sudan is gaining greater international attention, Smith sees potential for easing obstacles to legal accountability. ‘It’s important to remember that obligations to prevent genocide apply to all states,’ she says. ‘The International Court of Justice [ICJ] has previously said that even third-party states must use all means reasonably available to them to prevent genocide so far as possible.’

Encouraged by recent rulings on civil war abuses by Syrian officials, experts expect the same principle of 'universal jurisdiction' to be deployed in relation to Sudan. When international or domestic tribunals are unable to act, countries can prosecute grave crimes committed abroad. ‘Universal jurisdiction is one of the strongest avenues,’ says Hafetz. ‘Universal jurisdiction isn’t a replacement for international courts, or for the ICJ or ICC, but it is an important complementary mechanism that can help at least narrow the impunity gap.’

The conflict in Sudan, a country of nearly 52 million people, has been worsened by outside intervention. Smith says that accountability must extend beyond the battlefield to the financial and political networks, local or international, that sustain the RSF war machine. Legal challenges to arms sales and other economic activities enabling atrocities could establish accountability, support reparations and disrupt the networks sustaining the RSF. ‘As a practical matter,’ says Smith, ‘highlighting these relationships can increase pressure to cut off resources for warring parties like the RSF, which has an extensive business network.’

Emad Mekay is a freelance journalist and can be contacted at emad.mekay@int-bar.org