United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday condemned the reported attacks on civilians by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Meanwhile, Britain said it would push for a U.N. Security Council resolution to find a lasting solution to the more than 18-month-long conflict.
War erupted in mid-April 2023 from a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule, and triggered the world’s largest displacement crisis.
The current war has produced waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on the RSF.
Guterres said he was appalled by “reports of large numbers of civilians being killed, detained and displaced, acts of sexual violence against women and girls, the looting of homes and markets and the burning of farms,” said a U.N. spokesperson.
“Such acts may constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. Perpetrators of such serious violations must be held accountable,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
Britain, which assumed the presidency on Friday of the Security Council for November, said the 15-member body would meet in Sudan on Nov. 12 to discuss “scaling up aid delivery and ensuring greater protection of civilians by all sides.”
“We will be shortly introducing a draft Security Council resolution … to drive forward progress on this,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward told a press conference.
She said the draft would focus on “developing a compliance mechanism for the warring parties commitments they made on the protection of civilians in Jeddah over a year ago in 2023 and ways to support mediation efforts to deliver a ceasefire, even if we start local ceasefires before moving to a national one.”
A resolution needs at least 9 votes in favour and no vetoes by the U.S., France, Britain, Russia or China to be adopted.
The move comes as a three-month approval given by Sudanese authorities for the U.N. and aid groups to use the Adre border crossing with Chad to reach Darfur with humanitarian assistance due to expire in mid-November.
The Sudanese army-backed government is committed to facilitating aid deliveries across the country, including in areas controlled by the RSF, Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed said on Monday.
