Every year on 30 August, the world marks the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. The day is an important reminder that enforced disappearance is not merely the loss of a person from public view. It is a continuing violation that places victims outside the protection of the law and condemns families to live between hope and grief, often without knowing whether their loved ones are alive, detained, tortured, or dead.
In Sudan, enforced disappearance has become one of the most devastating and persistent features of the ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since the outbreak of the conflict on 15 April 2023, thousands of civilians have been subjected to arbitrary arrest, abduction, incommunicado detention and disappearance in circumstances that leave families without answers.
The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS) has continued to document enforced disappearances and related violations throughout the conflict. ACJPS’s reporting shows that these violations are being committed alongside arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, attacks on civilians and other grave abuses. In its earlier report, A Report on Enforced Disappearances: One Year into Sudan War, ACJPS highlighted enforced disappearance as a longstanding tool of repression in Sudan and warned of its renewed use during the current conflict.
Enforced disappearance during the current war is not confined to one geographic area or one method of targeting. A disturbing pattern has emerged in which people are seized at checkpoints, taken from their homes and places of work, abducted from streets or while fleeing violence, or detained after being accused of supporting the opposing party.
ACJPS has documented arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances as recurring violations during the war, including cases affecting activists, journalists, human rights defenders and other civilians. Its reporting also points to a growing pattern in which disappearances intersect with political, ethnic and identity-based targeting.
The consequences are particularly severe because detention frequently occurs in unofficial and secret locations. The existence of such places makes it difficult for families, lawyers and human rights organizations to establish the whereabouts and condition of detainees. Human Rights Watch has reported that both warring parties have engaged in widespread unlawful detention and enforced disappearances, including the use of unofficial detention sites.
What is emerging in Sudan is therefore not simply a pattern of arbitrary arrest. It is a broader system of uncertainty and concealment in which individuals can be removed from their communities without acknowledgment, held in undisclosed locations and denied contact with their families or legal representatives.
Women and children have been among those most severely affected by the expanding pattern of disappearance and abduction. For women and girls, disappearance may expose them to heightened risks of sexual violence, forced marriage, trafficking, exploitation and other forms of gender-based violence. Families are often unable to report these cases because of fear of reprisals, stigma or the collapse of communication and protection systems.
ACJPS has consistently documented the disproportionate impact of the war on women and children, including sexual violence against women and girls, recruitment of children, killing, displacement and other grave violations.
The disappearance of children is particularly alarming. A child who is separated from their family in a conflict zone, abducted during an attack, or taken into detention may disappear into a system from which families have little ability to obtain information. In the context of Sudan’s widespread displacement, the separation of children from parents or caregivers can further obscure cases of disappearance and make tracing extremely difficult.
Women also suffer as relatives of the disappeared. Mothers, wives, sisters and daughters often become the primary searchers for missing family members while facing economic hardship, insecurity and social pressure. Enforced disappearance therefore creates victims beyond the person who has been taken: it devastates entire families and communities.
One of the most urgent demands in Sudan is for truth. The families of disappeared persons have the right to know what happened to their relatives. Both the SAF and RSF, as parties exercising control over territory and detention facilities, must take immediate steps to disclose information concerning all persons deprived of their liberty.
This must include:
- publishing the names and whereabouts of all persons held in official and unofficial detention;
- granting families and lawyers access to detainees;
- providing accurate information on the fate and whereabouts of those who have died in custody or disappeared;
- identifying and disclosing the locations of all secret or unofficial detention centres;
- preserving all places of detention as potential crime scenes;
- protecting and identifying mass graves and suspected burial sites;
- preventing the destruction, concealment or tampering of evidence; and
- facilitating the dignified identification and return of human remains to families.
Where mass graves exist, they must not be treated as secret remnants of the war. They are potential crime scenes and places of mourning. Their locations must be protected, documented and subjected to independent forensic investigation. Families have the right to know whether their loved ones are among the dead.
The SAF and the RSF must immediately intervene to end all practices of enforced disappearance, abduction, secret detention and incommunicado detention.
Both parties must:
- Immediately release all civilians arbitrarily detained.
- Publicly disclose the location and identity of every person in their custody.
- Close all secret and unofficial detention centres.
- Provide families with verified information on the fate and whereabouts of disappeared relatives.
- Protect women and children from abduction, disappearance and related forms of violence.
- Provide immediate access to independent humanitarian and human rights organizations.
- Preserve detention records, bodies, burial sites and other evidence relevant to future investigations.
- Cooperate fully with independent national, regional and international accountability mechanisms.
Sudan’s enforced disappearance crisis also requires meaningful cooperation with the two important fact-finding mechanisms that have examined the country’s human rights situation: the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan established by the UN Human Rights Council and the Virtual Joint Fact-Finding Mission of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR).
The ACHPR’s Joint Fact-Finding Mission found that both the SAF and RSF, together with their respective allied forces, were responsible for documented human rights violations during the conflict and called for accountability.
Similarly, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission has documented grave violations by both warring parties. Its 2025 reporting found deliberate and large-scale attacks against civilians and documented conduct that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In November 2025, during an emergency session on Sudan, the Human Rights Council further called for urgent investigation into atrocities in El Fasher, where the Fact-Finding Mission reported evidence of killings, torture, rape, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances on a mass scale.
The SAF and RSF must therefore cooperate fully and without conditions with both Fact-Finding Missions and facilitate the implementation of their recommendations. This cooperation should include:
- providing investigators with safe and unrestricted access to relevant territories and facilities;
- disclosing the locations of official and unofficial detention centres;
- providing lists of detainees and persons who have died in custody;
- preserving evidence and facilitating access to mass graves and suspected burial sites;
- protecting witnesses, survivors and families from retaliation;
- facilitating the tracing of missing and disappeared persons; and
- supporting credible, independent and victim-centred investigations leading to accountability.
The disappearance of a person does not end when the arrest takes place. It continues every day that the authorities or armed groups refuse to disclose what happened.
On this International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Sudan must confront the human cost of secrecy. Families searching for their loved ones deserve answers. Women and children who have been abducted or disappeared must be found and protected. Survivors of secret detention must be heard. The dead must be identified and returned to their families with dignity.
Sudan cannot build peace on hidden detention centres, unidentified bodies and unmarked graves.
Both warring parties must end enforced disappearances, disclose the fate and whereabouts of all disappeared persons, reveal the locations of secret detention facilities and suspected mass graves, and cooperate fully with the UN and African Fact-Finding Missions.
“The families of the disappeared have waited long enough. Truth is not optional. Information is not a privilege. The right to know is a right that must be respected”.