Genocide committed by RSF militia in Sudan’s raging civil war, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says

The US government has determined that the genocide was carried out by members of the RSF paramilitary force and its allied militias in Sudan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday. The “Rapid Support Forces” and their allies are a part in a largely hidden but bloody civil war which claimed tens of thousands of lives in less than two years.

In a statement announcing the U.S. determination that genocide had taken place — and that new sanctions were imposed as a result — Blinken called it “a conflict of unmitigated brutality that has resulted in the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the world”.

Blinken announced sanctions against RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, also known as Hemedti, as well as seven RSF-related companies based in the United Arab Emirates and an individual accused of helping the RSF acquire weapons. As part of the sanctions, Hemedti and his family were barred from entering the United States.

The war has left “638,000 Sudanese facing the worst famine in Sudan’s recent history, more than 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and tens of thousands dead,” Blinken said.

“The RSF and RSF-aligned militias continued to direct attacks against civilians. The RSF and allied militias systematically murdered men and boys – including children – on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence” said Blinken. “These same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, killing innocent people fleeing the conflict, and preventing remaining civilians from accessing life-saving supplies.”

In May 2024, the organization Human Rights Watch said that RSF and its allies could be guilty of genocide against non-Arab ethnic communities for a specific series of attacks in the western region of Darfur. Since then, the RSF has been widely accused of ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes the war broke out.

The International Criminal Court has investigated ethnic killings in Darfur and said it has “reason to believe” that paramilitaries and the Sudanese army have committed unspecified “Rome Statute crimes”, which include war crimes , crimes against humanity and genocide. . The ICC investigation continues.

Why is there a civil war in Sudan?

Fighting broke out in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF in April 2023 after months of tension between the two top generals who had led the country. The former allies in charge of the SAF and the RSF had negotiated to fully integrate the RSF into the army before the formation of a new transitional government. Those negotiations broke down and the two parties went to war.

After the war broke out, the United States government, together with international partners, tried unsuccessfully to broker a peace agreement.

Journalists and aid officials have been largely barred from traveling to the country to report on the conflict first-hand, but independent researchers say the death toll from the war has been vastly underreported.

According to a study published in November by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, about 61,000 people were killed in the State of Khartoum alone, home to the capital of the same name, between April 2023 and June 2024.

The study found that more than 90% of those dead were not registered, but the estimated number was considerably higher than previously believed.

“Our findings reveal the severe and largely invisible impact of the war on Sudanese life, particularly preventable diseases and hunger,” said the report’s lead author, Dr. Maysoon Dahab, adding that “the level excess of killings” in central Kordofan and western Darfur. the regions “indicate wars within a war”.

“Today’s action is part of our continued efforts to promote accountability for all warring parties whose actions fuel this conflict,” Blinken said Tuesday. “The United States does not support any part of this war.”

What is genocide?

The UN adopted the Genocide Convention in 1948 after the Holocaust committed by Nazi Germany. In it, genocide is defined as any of a series of acts, “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” These acts include:

• Killing the group members.
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to group members.
• It deliberately inflicts on the group living conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
• It imposes measures aimed at preventing births in the group.
• Forcibly transferring the children of the group to another group.