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UN Human Rights Council: Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Sudan

Statement delivered under Item 10

As Human Rights Watch documented in a recent report on Darfur, Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have committed serious violations against civilians during two counter-insurgencies in 2014 and 2015. These abuses include torture, extrajudicial killings and mass rapes; the forced displacement of entire communities; the destruction of wells, food stores and other infrastructure necessary for sustaining life in a harsh desert environment; and the plunder of the collective wealth of families, such as livestock. The abuses appear to be widespread and systematic attacks on civilian populations that may constitute crimes against humanity. Their attacks were often carried out in areas that had been controlled or contested by various Darfur rebel factions. However, nearly all the abuses reported to Human Rights Watch were committed in villages and towns without a rebel presence at the time of the attacks.

The January 2015 attacks in the town of Golo, in Jebel Marra, were emblematic of the atrocities. The 21 people from Golo and neighboring villages Human Rights Watch interviewed said that they witnessed killing, rape, and widespread beating and looting, including the rape of scores of women in Golo’s hospital. Mariam (a pseudonym), 42, said, “They [the soldiers] separated women and men. They raped some women and they made the men carry stones from place to place as punishment.… Some [of the women] were raped in the hospital.… I saw seven raped with my own eyes.” Human Rights Watch has also documented similar patterns of abuse in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, where the Sudanese government has for the past four years engaged in indiscriminate and targeted aerial bombardment of civilian areas, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians including children, often by burning.

Government forces have destroyed civilian property including villages, health facilities, schools, mosques and churches, and government security forces including the RSF have been responsible for rapes and other forms of sexual violence.  Meanwhile the authorities continue to obstruct humanitarian assistance. Ongoing attacks and fighting have caused massive displacement over the past year.

In Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan, government security forces have arrested and arbitrarily detained dozens of opposition party members, human rights defenders, students, and political activists in particular in the lead up to, during, and after the national elections held in April 2015. The arrests were accompanied by mass media censorship, including the confiscation of entire print runs of up to 14 newspapers on a single day and threatening calls to editors.

Human Rights Watch has called for the Council to urgently dispatch investigation teams, with expertise in sexual and gender-based violence, to investigate crimes under international law and other widespread and serious violations and abuses of human rights in Darfur, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, identify those responsible, and provide recommendations for accountability.

Unfortunately, the Human Rights Council is once again discussing a resolution that falls short of reflecting the gravity of the situation in Sudan, and fails to set in place long-overdue mechanisms required to challenge the lack of international attention over the dramatic situations in the conflict areas. We call on the Independent Expert to give particular attention to the ongoing conflict related abuses and patterns of repression including the utter lack of accountability in Sudan and to make concrete recommendations on the action needed from this Council in this regard.

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