Top human rights investigators into Sudan’s brutal war called on Friday for a country-wide arms embargo as they recounted harrowing testimony of victims of horrific sexual attacks whose bodies are treated as a “theatre of operation” by fighters acting with total impunity.

“Since mid-April 2023, the conflict in Sudan has spread to 14 out of the 18 states impacting the entire country and the region, leaving eight million Sudanese internally displaced as a result of the conflict, with two million – over two million – forced to flee to neighbouring countries,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, Chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan.

Disturbing first findings

In its first report on the crisis after being created by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in October 2023, the panel insisted that rival militaries the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as well as their respective allies, were responsible for large-scale, indiscriminate and direct attacks involving airstrikes and shelling against civilians, schools, hospitals, communication networks and vital water and electricity supplies – indicating a total disregard for the protection of non-combatants.

The three independent rights experts leading the work of the Mission – Mohamed Chande Othman, Chair, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo and Mona Rishmawi – emphasized that the responsibility for the grave violations lay with “both parties and their respective allies” with many amounting to international crimes.

“In particular, we have found that both SAF and RSF conducted hostilities in densely-populated areas, in particular through constant strikes and artillery shellings in different cities, including Khartoum and different cities in Darfur, amongst others,” said Ms. Rishmawi.

Survivors’ bravery

Although the Government of Sudan has refused to cooperate with the fact-finding Mission after rejecting its mandate, investigators have gathered first-hand testimony from 182 survivors, family members and eyewitnesses. Extensive consultations with experts and civil society activists have also been conducted to corroborate and verify additional leads.

“Members of the RSF in particular have perpetrated sexual violence on a large scale in the context of attacks on cities in Darfur region and the greater Khartoum area,” insisted Ms. Ezeilo. “Victims recounted being attacked in their homes, beaten, lashed and threatened with death or harm to their relatives or children before being raped by more than one perpetrator. They were also subjected to sexual violence while seeking shelter from attacks or fleeing. We also found evidence of women being subjected to sexual slavery after being abducted by RSF members.”

El Geneina horrors

The panel’s report also offered insight into “large-scale, ethnic-based attacks on the non-Arab civilian population” – and in particular, the Masalit people – in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, an ethnically diverse city to around 540,000 people. Shortly after the outbreak of war in April 2023, the RSF and allied militia attacked the city, killing thousands, the investigators said, with “horrific assaults…torture, rape” and the destruction of property and pillage the norm.

“Masalit men were systematically targeted for killing,” the Mission’s report continued. “RSF and its allied militias went door to door in Masalit neighborhoods, looking for men and brutally attacking and killing them, sometimes in front of their families. Lawyers, doctors, human rights defenders, academics, community and religious leaders were apparently specifically targeted. RSF commanders reportedly issued orders to ‘comb the city’ and place checkpoints throughout”.

Highlighting the failure of the Sudanese military to protect civilians in cities and camps for those uprooted by the war, the rights experts urged the international community to extend the current arms embargo on the Darfurs to the whole of the country. “Starving the parties of arms and ammunition including new supplies of ammunition and arms will help in slowing down the appetite for hostilities,” said Mr. Othman.

Peacekeeping force call

The investigators also urged the establishment of a peacekeeping force by the international community, either under the purview of the UN or a regional body:

“This can be done by the United Nations and there has been, you know, in the neighbouring country, in South Sudan, there is actually, you know, a mandate for the United Nations to protect civilians in particular countries,” said Ms. Rishmawi. “This can also be done, as we know, from also the African Union, so regional organizations can actually do that.”

The breakdown in law and order in Sudan is such that children are widely recruited to take part in the conflict, too, the investigators said. “SAF is mobilizing and sometimes is mobilizing in schools, but its allied forces have been recruiting children and have been using children in combat. And that’s where the distinction that you find in our report. It is much more systematic and widespread by RSF,” Ms. Rishmawi noted.

“There has to be accountability” for this and other crimes, she continued, in a call for the creation of a special tribunal to hold perpetrators to account for the grave crimes continuing across Sudan with total impunity.

“These people need to be held to account. The fact that they were not held to account in previous conflicts is what made women the women’s body, as a theater of operation for this war. This has to stop, and the only way to stop is to have an international judicial mechanism because there is no confidence,” she said.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of UN News.

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities this afternoon closed its thirty-first session after adopting concluding observations on the reports of Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Denmark, Ghana, Mauritius, Netherlands and Ukraine.

Vivian Fernandez de Torrijos, Committee Rapporteur, said that, in addition to the nine States party reports, the Committee had considered six individual communications submitted under the Optional Protocol during the session. It found violations in two of them, no violations in one, and discontinued the other three. The Views and decisions would be transmitted to the parties as soon as possible and would be subsequently made public. The Committee also adopted guidelines on third-party interventions regarding communications submitted under the Optional Protocol, and considered matters related to inquiries pursuant to the Optional Protocol.

Also during the session, Ms. Fernandez de Torrijos said the Committee continued with the drafting process of general comment nine on article 11 of the Convention and established a Working Group to draft a general comment on article 29 of the Convention. It also decided to continue engaging with the United Nations Office at Geneva and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to improve the provision of accessible conference services and reasonable accommodation to members of the Committee and participants with disabilities at Committee meetings. The Committee further adopted a statement on persons with disabilities affected by disasters, and a statement on disability-inclusion in the Summit of the Future.

The Committee decided that, subject to the availability of funding, its thirty-second session would be held in Geneva from 3 to 21 March 2025, to be followed by the twentieth meeting of the pre-sessional working group from 24 to 28 March 2025, Ms. Fernandez de Torrijos reported.

With 191 ratifications, the Convention was the second largest ratified human rights treaty, she said. However, the Committee was concerned that meeting time and resources allocated to it did not match the large number of ratifications. It called on Member States and all competent United Nations bodies to rectify this situation by increasing the meeting time and resources allocated to the Committee through the granting of a third session of at least three weeks of meeting time.

Ms. Fernandez de Torrijos said the Committee remained concerned about the increasing number of initial and periodic reports pending to be considered, and called on Member States and concerned bodies to grant the Committee sufficient meeting time and resources to address this backlog. The Committee also called on States parties with long overdue reports to submit them as expeditiously as possible. Along with the Capacity Building Project of the Office of the High Commissioner, the Committee decided to engage actively with States parties with reports that were overdue for more than 10 years to build capacity for reporting.

Concluding, the Rapporteur said the Committee had also adopted the report on its thirty-first session.

The Committee then heard remarks from three speakers.

Edgar Corzo Sosa, Member of the Committee on the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, said that he was involved in an initiative to collect and analyse information and elaborate documents on the rights of people with disabilities in the context of migration. The International Day of Persons with Disabilities and International Migrants Day, commemorated on 3 and 18 December, respectively, were excellent opportunities to promote this initiative. There were plans to produce a guide on the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities in the context of migration for international, regional and country-level migration systems, and to develop a joint statement on this subject by the two Committees. Mr. Corzo Sosa said he would continue to keep the Committees informed about progress on the initiative.

Juan Ignacio Pérez Bello, International Disability Alliance, thanked the Committee for its work during the session. Civil society organizations were looking forward to reading the concluding observations for the nine States party reviews held during the session. The lack of resources for the treaty bodies was a major concern. Civil society organizations would continue to push for sufficient resources to be provided to the system through the General Assembly resolution on strengthening the treaty bodies scheduled for consideration in December. The International Disability Alliance welcomed the Committee’s efforts to develop two general comments on articles 11 and 29 of the Convention. Mr. Pérez Bello urged the Committee not to hold a public meeting with organizations of persons with disabilities immediately after its opening in the next session, as this took away crucial time from private meetings. He thanked the five outgoing Committee Experts for their contributions to the Committee and congratulated the Committee for its achievements during the thirty-first session.

A representative from Justice for All International congratulated the Committee on completing its thirty-first session. The organization was particularly interested in the issue of reasonable accommodation and was following up on cases involving reasonable accommodation in countries around the world, including Switzerland.

In closing remarks, Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame, Committee Chairperson, highlighted that during the session, the Committee had engaged with nine States parties of the Convention in very constructive and interactive dialogues, and engaged with organizations of persons with disabilities, national human rights institutions and independent monitoring mechanisms to enrich its work. The Committee had made advocacy efforts to ensure disability inclusion in the Pact of the Future, the Declaration on Future Generations, and the Global Digital Compact, and to promote the full inclusion of persons with disabilities in the post-2030 development agenda.

Ms. Oforiwa Fefoame said there were five outgoing Committee Experts: Rosa Idalia Aldana Salguero (Guatemala), Vivian Fernandez de Torrijos (Panama), Odelia Fitoussi (Israel), Samuel Njuguna Kabue (Kenya) and Saowalak Thongkuay (Thailand). These members had significantly contributed to the work of the Committee during their terms. The Committee would miss these members but would continue to connect with them.

It had been an intensive session, Ms. Oforiwa Fefoame said. She thanked all Committee members and their assistants, members of the Secretariat, civil society representatives, conference officers and all others who had contributed to making the session successful. In closing, she pledged her commitment to the continued progress of the Committee.

Summaries of the public meetings of the Committee can be found here, while webcasts of the public meetings can be found here. The programme of work of the Committee’s thirty-first session and other documents related to the session can be found here.

Subject to the availability of funding, the Committee’s thirty-second session will be held in Geneva from 3 to 21 March 2025, during which it is scheduled to review the reports of Canada, Dominican Republic, European Union, Palau, Tuvalu and Viet Nam.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Tahani Hamid, 35, remembers her former life as a housewife in Sudan’s Darfur region as peaceful and happy, caring for her three young children and preparing meals for them and her husband, a local policeman. But as rivalry between two Sudanese military factions erupted into full-blown conflict in April last year, a series of calamities shattered that tranquil life, changing it forever.

In the weeks before the outbreak of the conflict, armed skirmishes broke out in their neighbourhood in Neyala and a stray bullet pierced the metal roof of their mud-brick house, hitting Hamid just above the left elbow. She was rushed to hospital and underwent surgery on the wound. Thinking the worst was over, the family returned home, but any optimism proved tragically misplaced.

In July, armed militia fighters entered their home to detain Hamid’s husband. When Hamid tried to defend him, she was struck with the butt of an automatic rifle, leaving her with serious injuries. Her husband was tied up and taken away and Hamid has not seen him since. She is unsure if he is even alive.

A month later in August, the unthinkable happened. While Hamid was shopping at the local market, an explosion ripped through the morning air. Minutes later a neighbour rushed towards her and said her house had been hit. Her twin daughters and their grandmother who had been looking after them had all been killed. She collapsed, waking up the next day in hospital with the realization that her worst nightmare had become reality.

Despite her grief, Hamid still had her 18-month-old son Emad to protect. She decided to flee to Libya with him and a cousin. Libya has a historic connection to Sudan and prior to the start of the conflict was home to over 130,000 Sudanese. Nevertheless, the long journey through the desert would be fraught with danger. “I had no choice,” said Hamid. “I was too scared that they would come after me too.”

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Nigerian authorities have charged 10 protesters who were arrested during protests across Nigeria in August 2024 with treason, which carries a possible death penalty, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should drop the charges.

According to legal sources consulted by Human Rights Watch, the 10 protesters are among the 124 people arrested in Abuja and other states, including Kano and Kaduna, after civil society-led protests, tagged #EndBadGovernance, began on August 1, calling for an end to economic hardship. On September 2 at a Federal High Court in Abuja police announced the charge of conspiracy to commit treason,  for attempting to destabilize Nigeria, seeking to remove the president, waging war against the government, and inciting mutiny, among other reasons.

“By charging protesters with treason, the Nigerian authorities are sending a troubling message about their intolerance for dissent,” said Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of equating protesting with a crime punishable by death, the government should uphold Nigerians’ right to freedom of expression and listen to their grievances.”

Deji Adeyanju, a lawyer representing the 124 protesters, told Human Rights Watch that his legal team made several attempts to visit the protesters in custody at the Police Intelligence Response Team office in Abuja, but that the authorities refused to grant them access. He said that they had no contact with any of the detainees from the time of their arrest until the arraignment proceedings on September 2, and that the authorities had not officially informed them about the session. Adeyanju said the protesters charged were in handcuffs, looked malnourished, and had rashes on their bodies.

All 124 protesters, including children aged 14 to 17, were transferred from police custody to correctional or youth detention centers following an August 24 court order to hold them for 60 days until an investigation is concluded and charges are brought against them. This order appears to violate Nigeria’s administration of criminal justice law, which states that pretrial detention orders should not exceed 14 days, following which another application by the police can be made for 14 more days, stating why an extension is necessary.

The Federal High Court in Abuja set a bail hearing on September 11 for the 10 protesters charged. The authorities should protect due process rights for everyone, including the right to a fair trial, Human Rights Watch said.

Among those arraigned on September 2 was Angel Innocent, a 51-year-old single mother who participated in the protests at Moshood Abiola Stadium in Abuja. She was featured in a television interview shared on social media in which she accused government officials and other politicians of paying people 5,000 naira (about US$3) to disrupt the #EndBadGovernance protests at the stadium.

In recent months, the authorities have intensified a crackdown on critics and journalists, marked by numerous instances of abductions, unlawful arrests, and detention. On August 5, Issac Bristol, a social commentator alleged to be in charge of an anonymous social commentary account known as @PIDOMNIGERIA on X (formerly Twitter) was reported missing. Following public outcry, the police confirmed on August 24, almost 3 weeks later, that he was in their custody.

Bristol had been secretly arrested at a hotel in Port Harcourt, River State, and taken into police custody in Abuja. He was charged at a Federal High Court in Abuja with crimes including promoting the #EndBadGovernance hashtag, disseminating false information intended to disrupt law and order, obtaining and sharing classified information, and money laundering.

Other actions by the authorities have also raised significant concerns. In July, a federal legislator, Tajudeen Abass, introduced the Counter Subversion Bill, which he claimed was aimed at enhancing Nigeria’s counterterrorism framework by addressing subversive activities. The bill, which was eventually withdrawn following public outcry, was reported to include several troubling and overly broad provisions.

These included a penalty of up to 5 million naira (about $3,100) or a prison sentence of five to ten years, or both, for refusing to recite the national anthem; a fine of 4 million naira (about $2,500) or up to a two-year prison sentence for insulting, defaming, or discrediting community, religious, or government leaders; and a fine of 5 million naira or up to a 10-year prison term, or both, for activities that foster mistrust, intolerance, or violence threatening Nigeria’s peace and security.

Adeyanju said that “while critical issues like the economy and insecurity require urgent attention, the current administration is instead focusing on undermining human rights.” He said that “activists vocal on social media have expressed concerns about their safety, as individuals are being arrested and charged with treason merely for protesting or critiquing the government.”

“In their relentless effort to suppress dissent, the Nigerian authorities are not only violating more rights and the rule of law, but also deepening public distrust in the government,” Ewang said. “The authorities should immediately drop the charges brought against those rightfully exercising their rights and release them immediately.”

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Human Rights Watch (HRW).