By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) – Both sides in Sudan’s civil war have committed abuses that may amount to war crimes and world powers must send peacekeepers and extend an arms embargo to protect civilians, a U.N.-mandated mission said on Friday.
Both Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have attacked civilians, used torture and made arbitrary arrests, according to the 19-page report, which it says is based on 182 interviews with survivors, their relatives and witnesses.
“The gravity of these findings underscores the need for urgent and immediate action to protect civilians,” said the head of the UN fact-finding mission, Mohamed Chande Othman, who called for the immediate deployment of an independent and impartial force.
Both sides have rejected previous accusations from the United States and human rights groups, and have accused each other of committing abuses. Neither side immediately responded to a request for comment on Friday, nor issued a statement in response to the report.
The mission called for an extension of the UN arms embargo, which currently only applies to the western region of Darfur. The war that began in Khartoum in April last year has spread to 14 of the country’s 18 states.
The alleged abuses could amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, the mission said.
The mission also said it had found reasonable grounds to believe that the RSF and its allied militias had committed additional war crimes, including sexual slavery and the recruitment of child soldiers in the conflict.
The investigation team said it had attempted to contact Sudanese authorities on multiple occasions but had received no response.
The conflict began when competition between the army and the RSF, which had previously shared power after staging a coup, erupted into open warfare.
Civilians in Sudan are facing increasing famine, mass displacement and disease after 17 months of war, aid agencies say.
U.S.-led mediators said last month they had won assurances from both sides in talks in Switzerland to improve humanitarian access, but that the Sudanese military’s absence from the discussions had hampered progress.
The report is the first by the three-member mission since its creation in October 2023 by the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
A group of Western countries, including the United States and Britain, will call for its renewal at a meeting starting next week, and diplomats expect opposition from Sudan, which views the war as an internal matter.