Statement: Atrocities in Sudan

The atrocities that have been documented in Sudan over recent weeks are appalling. There is evidence that the fall of the city of El Fasher in Darfur to the RSF has precipitated a massacre of civilians on an utterly horrifying scale. Some expert estimates put the likely toll of killings at 60,000 or more in just the last few weeks. The systematic use of sexual violence and starvation as weapons of war are evident, as is the targeting of people based on their ethnicity. 

The immediate threat has now moved to the city of El-Obeid and the camp of displaced people at Tawila. The eyes of the world must be upon the hundreds of thousands of people under terrible threat there, and what has happened in El Fasher, and in El Geneina before that, must not be allowed to recur. 

I have been engaging with experts and with Ministers to understand this horror and the steps that must be taken to prevent further atrocities. The Government has rightly taken consistent diplomatic action to raise these issues in the United Nations and with our international partners. But we must do more, urgently, to expose these horrors and prevent further escalation of the threat to Sudanese civilian lives.