Sudan - May 2024

An intensification of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, has prompted a UN expert to warn of genocide. El-Fasher, the last major urban area in Darfur controlled by the SAF, has been besieged by the RSF since April 2024. However, by May the security situation had significantly deteriorated, leaving the more-than one million people thought to be trapped in the city at risk of dying from a lack of food and medicine, being caught in the crossfire or becoming the targets of ethnic violence. Experts have warned that the fighting threatens to aggravate intercommunal conflict, predicting that the increasingly polarised environment could lead to large-scale ethnic killings. Among them was the UN’s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, who in a UN Security Council briefing on 21 May stated that the risk of genocide in Sudan was ‘growing, every single day’.       

Update: In September 2025, the RSF intensified its assault on El-Fasher and experts predicted that it was close to capturing the city from the SAF. An estimated 260,000 people remain trapped in El-Fasher, which is now partially surrounded by a newly constructed embankment, built by the paramilitary forces to trap civilians. Fears of widespread ethnic violence in the wake of an RSF victory persist, with fighters reportedly intent on ‘clean[ing] El-Fasher of its non-Arab community.’     

Sources: The New Humanitarian, Middle East Eye (1), Middle East Eye (2), Sudan Tribune, United Nations (1), United Nations (2), British Broadcasting Corporation (1), International Crisis Group, Yale University, British Broadcasting Corporation (2)