The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS), writes to the Commission to express our concerns and urge you to address the ongoing violations of human rights in Sudan marked by continued impunity. ACJPS is a non-profit, non-governmental organization working to monitor and promote respect for human rights and legal reform in Sudan.
There is overwhelming evidence that Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the armed militias are violating human rights and international humanitarian law in Sudan. Since the war erupted on 15 April 2023, the humanitarian crisis and human rights violations in Sudan have reached an unprecedented scale. There has been indiscriminate targeting of civilians and infrastructure by the warring parties. As the conflict enters its sseventh month, the death toll continues to rise, with the remains of many victims yet to be located, collected, identified, or buried. While estimates suggest that over 9,000 lives have been lost by October 2023, the true extent of the tragedy is likely much higher due to the intensity of the fighting and the challenges in documenting and confirming casualties. In Darfur, the violence has taken on an ethnic turn, leading to a new round of ethnic cleansing and demanding urgent action. Unfortunately, this is just the latest cycle of a pattern of violence that stretches back more than 20 years. It is a vivid symbol of the failure of the commitment to end genocide and ethnic cleansing. In mid-June 2023, the brutal massacre of more than 1,100 civilians in West Darfur capital of El Geneina, was determined by both the US Department of State and the Sudan Conflict Observatory and local sources to be a deliberate act of ethnic violence targeting non-Arab communities