Sudan's military and rival militias are committing war crimes in Darfur, the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor has announced.
Karim Khan launched a war crimes investigation into the flare-up of the conflict in July. On Monday, he informed the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that there are “reasons to believe” that crimes defined under the Rome Statute are being committed in the restive western region.
The situation in Darfur is “dire by any standard.” @IntlCrimCourt prosecutor @KarimKhanQC He appealed to the UN Security Council to ensure that ambassadors do not lose sight of individual human stories as millions of people are affected by brutal crimes and wars.
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The situation in Darfur is “dire by any standard,” he told the Security Council.
The Rome Statute established the ICC in 2002 to investigate the world's worst atrocities, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression.
“We are collecting very important materials, information and evidence related to these specific crimes,” Khan said.
flare up
Fighting broke out in April last year between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the latest flare-up in a conflict that has smoldered for more than two decades.
A recent wave of violence has left almost half of Sudan's 49 million people in need of aid and more than 7.5 million people displaced. The United Nations reports 12,000 people have been killed by the end of 2023, but the actual death toll is believed to be much higher.
Mr Khan recently visited a refugee camp in neighboring Chad, where tens of thousands of refugees from Darfur are being held, and spoke of his fear that Darfur would become a “forgotten atrocity”.
He called on Sudan's military-led government to issue multiple entry visas to ICC investigators and respond to 35 requests for assistance.
trend of impunity
In April last year, long-simmering tensions between Sudan's army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedi” Dagalo, erupted in urban fighting in the capital Khartoum and other parts of the country. I fell into chaos. .
The violence has escalated since an earlier conflict that began in 2003, when rebels from the region's sub-Saharan African ethnic communities launched an armed rebellion, accusing the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of discrimination and neglect. Ta.
The government of then-President Omar al-Bashir responded with airstrikes and unleashed the People's Defense Forces, also known as the Janjaweed, a militia accused of mass murder and rape. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were forced to flee their homes.
Internationally brokered agreements and peacekeepers have struggled to quell the violence over the past two decades.
In 2005, the UNSC referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC. Khan said that under the resolution, courts still have the power to investigate crimes within the region.
Prosecutors warned that the world must face the “ugly and unavoidable truth” about its failures in the last conflict.
“The international community's failure to enforce the warrants issued by the ICC's independent judges has fueled a climate of impunity that continues to fuel an outbreak of violence that began in April and continues today,” he said. .
“Without justice for the atrocities of the past, it is an inescapable fact that we will blame the present generation, and if we do nothing now, future generations will suffer the same fate,” Khan said. he said.
“Rules of War”
In response to the claims, Sudan's Ambassador to the United Nations Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed said the government was cooperating with prosecutors and was awaiting Khan's visit.
He accused the ICC of failing to take into account “strategic engagement and operational realities on the ground.”
Mohamed said the RSF's “paramilitary wing” was carrying out large-scale, systematic attacks aimed at “enforcing ethnic cleansing and identity killing” against Darfur's Masalit ethnic community. . He said it was up to prosecutors to decide whether this amounted to genocide.
The Sudanese ambassador said the military was not seeking war and needed to protect the country. He insisted that the military will spare no effort to minimize collateral damage and abide by the laws of war.
ICC's “progress”
Last April, the first ICC trial into atrocities committed by Sudanese government-backed forces in Darfur began in The Hague, Netherlands.
The defendant, People's Defense Forces leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushaib), has pleaded not guilty to 31 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Khan informed the board of “progress” in the ICC case against former president al-Bashir and two senior government security officials from the 2003 Darfur conflict, Abdulrahim Muhammad Hussein and Ahmed Haroun. He said he was happy to be able to do so.
“We have obtained evidence that further strengthens these particular cases,” Khan said. The three have not been handed over to the ICC and their whereabouts remain unknown during the current conflict in Sudan.