It’s the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with famine, more than 11 million people forced from their homes, 30 million people needing humanitarian assistance and tens of thousands dead
In April 2023, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) went to battle against each other and launched a conflict of “unmitigated brutality,” according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The conflict has resulted in the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with the worst famine in Sudan’s recent history, more than 11 million people forced from their homes, more than 30 million people needing humanitarian assistance and tens of thousands dead, although recent reports put the number of dead much higher.
While both sides have committed war crimes, only the RSF has been found to commit crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. On Tuesday, the United States took the additional step of finding that the RSF is committing genocide. In an announcement by the U.S. State Department, Blinken said the “RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdered innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies,” resulting in a finding of genocide.
Mass RSF attacks on El Geneina in 2023, for example, turned previously peaceful Sudanese homes into cemeteries. In one day in June, more than 1,000 people were killed. Hundreds were killed in a refugee camp. Overall, the United Nations said between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in the city of about 540,000. Dozens of witnesses said civilians were targeted because of their ethnicity: Children were reportedly shot on their mothers’ backs as they fled or were thrown into the river, and captives were tortured and killed. The New York Times has documented war crimes via RSF “trophy videos,” glorifying the death and destruction being committed.
Starving Sudanese have resorted to eating soil, leaves and peanut shells, while earlier this year, one refugee camp was reporting a child death every two hours. The RSF has weaponized food. Human rights activist Essam Al-Rashid said that the RSF killed 40 farmers last month in the village of Tabun in White Nile and that the RSF had attacked another farming area near the border of South Sudan on Monday. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has said rape is being used as “a weapon of war.” In September 2024, the BBC had an in-depth report talking to survivors of rape in Sudan. “We know that it’s the RSF who raped the girls,” said one.
The Washington Post reports an “orgy of looting” by RSF forces that have taken “crops, gold, vehicles and so much cash from the banking system that citizens are chronically short of paper money.” The Post also reports that the RSF and its allied forces have also repeatedly looted aid organizations: The U.N. World Food Program alone has had more than $60 million worth of food looted and 85 other aid groups were attacked and looted at a time when children are starving to death.
Why it matters
Genocide is a term coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” It consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. It was first recognized under international law in 1946. In 1948, it was codified by the United Nations and has since been ratified by 153 countries.
Declaring acts as a genocide matters. The word is more than just strong language. It denotes specific activity and an intent to destroy a specific group of people. A country declaring genocide, as the U.S. did today, is a political act that is not legally binding on other nations. However, if the U.S. were to file a claim with the International Justice Court (IJC) and the IJC were to find the RSF guilty of genocide, it would trigger legal and moral obligations for the international community to intervene to stop the genocide, prevent further occurrences and punish those responsible.
The U.S. government has declared a genocide only six times since the end of the Cold War, according to the National Security Council: In Bosnia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994, Iraq in 1995, Sudan’s Darfur region in 2004, areas under the control of the Islamic State in 2016 and 2017, and in Myanmar in 2022.
With today’s declaration came sanctions for RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, for his role in systematic atrocities committed against the Sudanese people, including gross violations of human rights in Darfur, namely the mass rape of civilians by RSF soldiers under his control. As a result of this designation, Hemedti and his immediate family members are ineligible for entry to the United States. It will also likely have a chilling effect on relations between Hemedti and other heads of state in Africa and elsewhere at a time when Hemedti wants to become the recognized leader of Sudan.
The U.S. is also sanctioning seven RSF-owned companies in the United Arab Emirates, including one handling gold likely smuggled out of Sudan, according the State Department statement and the Associated Press. The genocide declaration and resulting sanction may bring new scrutiny to the role of the United Arab Emirates in the war. The Emirates has supplied the R.S.F. with smuggled weapons and powerful drones, according to American officials and visual evidence collected by The New York Times.
“The RSF is responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities being committed anywhere in the world today,” said John Prendergast, co-founder of The Sentry, a US-based watchdog group that tracks corruption. “Today’s actions by the Biden administration are an important start to creating that accountability, which hopefully can provide leverage both for deterring future human rights crimes as well as for helping to drag the RSF into treating ceasefire negotiations more seriously.”
The RSF did not respond to press requests for comment.
Originally published in the Deseret News
