Sudan’s Conflict and Resulting Starvation - Global Research
Global ResearchMAY 16 2024
Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias as part of a wider ethnic cleansing campaign in Sudan's West Darfur, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released on Thursday.
Following the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War between the Sudanese military and the RSF, an Arab-led paramilitary force, in April 2023, HRW collated 221 witness statements documenting the alleged campaign of ethnic cleansing conducted by RSF forces against Sudan’s non-Arab Masalit tribe of El Geneina in an ethnically diverse region.
One of the events highlighted by the report was on June 15, 2023, when RSF paramilitaries allegedly went on a spree in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur. Witnesses described summary executions of civilians — including children being piled up and shot — as well as torture, looting, rape and other forms of sexual violence.
This is a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions, with reports that more massacres could be coming. UN officials and diplomats from a number of countries are doing all they can to deescalate the situation, urging all parties to respect the sanctity of human life and international humanitarian law.
It's undisputed that the situation in Sudan is calamitous and needs urgent attention. However, rather than getting better, the situation appears to be getting worse, and appears to be exacerbated by the fact that diplomats haven't come up with a cogent strategy and are fighting among themselves about how to go about solving the problem.