ICC prosecutor calls on world to “stop the bleeding” in Sudan before the region spins out of control
NEW YORK CITY: Violence in Sudan has continued to escalate over the past six months, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor said Monday, with reports of rape, crimes against children and persecution on a massive scale.
“Terror has become a common currency,” Karim Khan told a UN Security Council meeting, “and terror is not felt by people with guns but by people running, often with nothing on their feet, hungry.”
War between rival military factions has raged in Sudan for more than a year. Since it began in April 2023, around 19,000 people have been killed. More than 10 million are internally displaced and more than 2 million have fled to neighboring countries as refugees, making it the largest displacement crisis in the world.
The country is on the brink of famine as a serious food crisis looms, with many families reportedly already often going days without food.
Khan said the ICC prioritizes investigations into allegations of crimes against and affecting children and sex crimes. These “profound violations of human rights, mass violations of personal dignity” continue to be fueled by the “provision of arms, financial support from various sectors and political triangulations that lead to inaction by the international community,” he added.
His comments came during the latest semi-annual report to the Security Council on the court's Darfur-related activities. Almost 20 years after the council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC, arrest warrants issued by the court against former president Omar Al-Bashir, former ministers Ahmad Mohammed Harun and Abdel Raheem Mohammed Hussein and former commander-in-chief of the Justice and Equality Movement, Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain, is still outstanding.
Khan said such failures to execute arrest warrants for accused individuals have contributed to several unwelcome consequences, including “the climate of impunity and the outbreak of violence that began in April (2023), and continues today, (where) belligerents believe they can get away with murder and rape; the feeling that the bandwidth for the (security) council is too limited, it is too busy with other epicenters of conflicts, hot wars in other parts of the world; that we have lost the plight of the people in Darfur out of sight, we have somehow forgotten our responsibility under the UN Charter; (and) the sense that Darfur or Sudan is a lawless zone where people can act with abandon, based on their worst inclinations, their worst instincts, the hatred and the politics of power, the opportunities to make money.”
He called on councilors to “get behind” the demand for justice.
In remarks aimed at both warring factions, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, as well as “those who fund them, arm them, give orders, get certain benefits,” Khan said his office was investigating and “using our resources as effectively as we can to ensure that the events since last April are subject to the principle of international humanitarian law and the requirement that every human life must be seen as having equal value.”
He said that after “a lot of difficulties” the Sudanese authorities are finally cooperating with ICC investigators who have been able to enter Port Sudan, collect evidence and cooperate with General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, Commander of the Sudan Armed Forces and the Sudanese armed forces. the country's de facto leader.
“But a swallow does not make a summer,” Khan added as he underscored the need for “continuous, deepening cooperation with the Sudanese armed forces, with General Al-Burhan and his government moving forward.”
He said that “one concrete way in which this commitment to accountability, and this lack of tolerance for impunity, can be proven is through the proper execution of court orders,” including the arrest of former minister Harun and his surrender to court.
However, Khan said recent significant efforts to engage with the leadership of the Rapid Support Forces have so far proved fruitless.
Meanwhile, he said, ICC investigators have visited neighboring Chad several times and collected “very valuable testimony” from displaced Sudanese nationals living there as refugees.
They have met with representatives of Sudanese civil society in Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Europe, he added, “to get and preserve their accounts and their stories, to analyze it and piece it together, to see what crimes, if something, it shows and who is responsible for the hell on earth being unleashed so stubbornly, so persistently on the people of Darfur.”
Khan said his office has used technological tools to collect and piece together various forms of evidence from phones, videos and audio recordings, and that this is “proving to be extremely crucial in penetrating the veil of impunity.”
The collective efforts of investigators, analysts, lawyers and members of civil society have resulted in significant progress, he added, and he expressed hope that he will soon be able to announce that arrest warrants have been sought for individuals deemed most responsible. for the crimes in the country.
Meanwhile, Khan sounded a wider alarm over what he described as “a trapezoid of chaos in that part of the continent.”
He continued: “If you draw a line from the Mediterranean in Libya, down to the Red Sea in Sudan, and then draw a line to sub-Saharan Africa, and then all the way to the Atlantic, with Boko Haram causing instability, chaos and suffering in Nigeria, and then back to Sudan, (we) see the map and the countries that are at risk of being troubled or destabilized by this concentration of chaos and suffering.”
He warned members of the Security Council that in addition to concerns about the rights of the people of Darfur, “we have reached a tipping point where a Pandora's box of ethnic, racial, religious, sectarian (and) commercial interests will be unleashed.”
He added that “they will no longer be amenable to the political powers of the great states of the world, or even in this council. It requires some real action now to stop the bleeding … in Sudan.”
