The United Nations human rights chief on Friday said that the apparent deliberate denial of safe access for humanitarian agencies within war-torn Sudan could amount to a war crime.
A Sudanese woman, who fled the conflict in Murnei in Sudan's Darfur region, walks beside carts carrying her family belongings upon crossing the border between Sudan and Chad in Adre, Chad August 2, 2023. Reuters/Zohra Bensemra
The United Nations human rights chief on Friday said that the apparent deliberate denial of safe access for humanitarian agencies within war-torn Sudan could amount to a war crime.
Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been fighting Sudan's army for control of the country since April last year in a war that has killed thousands, displaced millions of people inside and outside the country and sparked warnings of famine.
Addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Sudan had become a "living nightmare."
"The apparently deliberate denial of safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian agencies within Sudan itself constitutes a serious violation of international law, and may amount to a war crime," he said.
"I call - again - on the warring parties to meet their legal obligations by opening humanitarian corridors without delay before more lives are lost."
Aid supplies have been looted and humanitarian workers attacked, while international agencies and NGOs have complained about bureaucratic obstacles to get into the army-controlled hub of Port Sudan to get humanitarian assistance into the country.
Millions of people in Sudan's Darfur region are at risk of dying of hunger after a decision by the Sudanese government to prohibit aid deliveries through Chad, an advocacy group for internally displaced people said on Tuesday.
The order effectively shuts down a crucial route for supplies to Darfur, which is controlled by RSF.
Half of Sudan's population - around 25 million people - need humanitarian assistance and protection, while millions of people have fled to the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan, according to the United Nations.
"With more than eight million forced to flee within Sudan and to neighbouring countries, this crisis is upending the country and profoundly threatening peace, security and humanitarian conditions throughout the entire region," Turk said.
Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Alex Richardson
Human Rights Watch has accused an Abu Dhabi-based security company of recruiting Colombian private military contractors and deploying them to fight alongside Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) between 2024 and 2025, adding to what the rights group describes as a growing body of evidence of Emirati military support for the paramilitary group.
Farmers across Sudan say the hike in global fuel and fertilizer costs resulting from the Iran conflict will force them to cut back on planting this summer, restricting food production in a country where war has caused acute hunger.
At least nine people were killed and six others injured when a four-storey building collapsed overnight in the Moroccan city of Fez, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) east of Rabat, local authorities said on Thursday.
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