UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has warned that another human rights catastrophe is unfolding in Sudan’s El-Obeid, urging the international community to act before the situation spirals beyond recovery.
Turk issued the warning as the United Nations Human Rights Council convened an urgent debate on Friday in Geneva to address the deteriorating situation in and around El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, where an estimated 500,000 civilians are at risk of large-scale atrocities.
The city has endured siege-like conditions for more than 18 months, as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied troops mass around it, backed by intensifying drone strikes and artillery shelling.
More than 20 drone strikes have hit El-Obeid in the past two weeks alone, targeting hospitals, water facilities and fuel infrastructure, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Turk drew a direct comparison with the fall of El Fasher in North Darfur last year, where tens of thousands of people were killed following an 18-month RSF siege.
A subsequent United Nations investigation found that the violence bore the hallmarks of genocide.
“We have seen this playbook before,” Turk said. “We cannot allow a repeat of the preventable atrocities we documented in El Fasher and Zamzam internally displaced persons camp in North Darfur last year.
“The states with influence have the duty to exercise it now to stop this madness in its tracks.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council’s urgent debate was convened at the request of Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom, which warned that siege-like conditions had left thousands of civilians trapped and cut off from basic services, with widespread reports of ethnically targeted violence, including sexual and gender-based violence.
A draft resolution under consideration by the council would mandate the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan to carry out an urgent investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in and around El-Obeid.
The draft also condemns the use of starvation as a method of warfare.
Sudan has been engulfed in civil war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, displacing more than 13 million people internally and driving millions more to the brink of famine.
