From The New Humanitarian, June 26. Lightly edited, internal links added.

Map: PCL

A company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has hired and transported hundreds of Colombian private military contractors to Sudan to fight for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released May 25.

The recruitment of Colombian private military contractors further demonstrates the UAE’s role in providing support to the RSF, which has been repeatedly accused of atrocities in Sudan, said Mausi Segun, executive director of the Africa Division at HRW. Since 2024, Abu Dhabi-based security company Global Security Services Group (GSSP) has hired hundreds of Colombian private contractors to send to Sudan. HRW found that the recruits all passed through a UAE military base in Ghiyathi and an apparent private military facility in Al Wathba, both in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

The report also raised concerns over the use of children in the armed conflict. An interviewed Colombian contractor trained RSF recruits at its main base in South Darfur. The contractor reported that a number of the recruits were underage. The Geneva Convention prohibits the recruitment and use of children under 15 in active armed conflict. The UN Secretary-General’s office has verified 16 cases involving child recruitment by the RSF, and included the armed group in the UN “list of shame” for grave violations against children in conflict.

According to HRW, the GSSP and UAE authorities have not responded to its allegations. However, the UAE has long denied any military support to the conflicting parties in Sudan.

The rights group called on the international community, including the EU, to press the UAE to end its support for the RSF by suspending military cooperation and arms sales. Segun added: “Other countries need to stop accepting the UAE’s blanket denials of support to the RSF, which fly in the face of the facts, and should put an end to its impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry has also accused the UAE of supporting the RSF, and attempted to bring the UAE before the International Court of Justice for its alleged complicity in acts of genocide carried out by the RSF in Darfur. However, the court refused to hear the case for lack of jurisdiction, noting that the UAE reserved the jurisdictional clause when it signed the Genocide Convention.

The Sudanese army and the RSF have engaged in a civil war for the last three years. The Sudan war has caused one of the greatest humanitarian crises on Earth. Some 34 million people in Sudan require urgent humanitarian assistance, the UN recently warned.

From JURIST, May 27. Used with permission.

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It is alarming to learn he has returned to combat without any investigation into the allegations. The RSF leadership must remove Abu Lulu from the battlefield and from their ranks immediately, and he must be investigated for the war crime of wilful killings.

The rights organization also called for the RSF to end attacks on civilians and allow them safe passage to flee the ongoing violence.

The Sudanese army and the RSF have engaged in a civil war for the last three years, causing one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, and mass killings. Al-Fatih Abdallah Idris AKA “Abu Lulu” was arrested in late October 2025 by the RSF following global outrage from a viral video appearing to show him executing unarmed civilians.

The 15 captives were killed during the RSF’s takeover of El Fasher city in the Darfur region. A UN report found that the RSF was responsible for at least 6,000 deaths in the two days preceding the execution of the civilian captives, with 1,400 deaths reported to have taken place along the city’s escape routes. The UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission into the Sudan war also concluded that the mass killings by the RSF during the takeover of El Fasher were consistent with the markers of genocide.

Reuters conducted an investigation this year, and reported that multiple sources confirmed that Abu Lulu was released from detention and returned to the battlefield. Among other sources, a Sudanese intelligence official and another RSF commander witnessed him on a battlefield in Kordofan in March.

A spokesman for the RSF-led parallel government, known as the Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS), denied that Abu Lulu had been released. In a statement to Reuters, Ahmed Tugud Lisan said the claim was “untrue, malicious, and completely false.”

From JURIST, May 21. Used with permission. Internal links added.

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The Sudan team at the Human Rights Office found that upwards of 80% of all civilian deaths from January to April—numbering at least 880—can be attributed to drone attacks. These include attacks on May 8 that killed 26 civilians in Al Quz, South Kordofan, and near El Obeid, North Kordofan.

Türk stated:

This increasing reliance on drones allows hostilities to continue unabated in the approaching rainy season, which in the past has brought about a lull in ground operations. An intensification of hostilities in the coming weeks, as the parties seek to gain or consolidate control of territory amid shifting conflict dynamics, risks hostilities expanding even further to central and eastern states, with lethal consequences for civilians across enormous areas.

Targets struck by drones include healthcare facilities, rendering hospitals inoperable, and a May 4 attack on the Khartoum International Airport that led to the disruption of all flights. The Sudanese government has accused Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of being behind the drone strike on the Khartoum airport, and others. Military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Asim Awad Abdelwahab claims to have intelligence of four drone attacks since March 1 having originated from Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar using drones provided by the UAE.

The UAE has come under fire for supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in their war against the Sudanese government. The conflict in Sudan erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF. The conflict has been described as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with the RSF facing accusations of war crimes and genocide by the UN.

From JURIST, May 11. Used with permission. Internal links added.

AI-generated image of various drones used in Sudan, via Sudan Tribune

Sudan’s paramilitary-turned-rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have repeatedly attacked the Darfur border town of Tina, with more than 123 injured people arriving at a hospital supported by Médecins Sans Frontières near the Chad frontier last week. A drone strike—with responsibility still unclear—also killed 17 people on the Chadian side of the border. Tina has been hosting large numbers of displaced Darfuris fleeing RSF attacks elsewhere. (TNH)

This wave of attacks took place in April of this year, when the camp fell to the RSF, and were found to constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL). The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said, “These horrific patterns of violations—committed with impunity—are consistent with what my Office has repeatedly documented.” The UN called for an “impartial, thorough, and effective” investigation to hold those responsible for the atrocities accountable.

The report’s key findings include the killing of at least 1,013 civilians. The report documented widespread summary executions, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, abductions, and enforced disappearances. During the assault, the RSF pillaged food and livestock, looted shops and homes, and burned down houses. This conduct has extensive humanitarian and legal implications, according to the report:

The RSF’s offensive in and around Zamzam IDP camp had a devastating impact on the human rights of its residents, causing widespread loss of life and injuries, including long-term psychological harm…and broad destruction of essential civilian infrastructure. The documented patterns of IHL violations and IHRL abuses suggest that many of these acts were ethnically motivated, targeting individuals based on their tribal identity or perceived affiliation.

The aspect of ethnic motivation relates to recent warnings from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) over escalating ethnically targeted violence in Sudan.

A woman who returned to the camp to search for her 15-year-old son described the situation, stating, “The camp was empty. I saw scattered dead bodies on the roads. Only chicken, donkeys and sheep were wandering around. The RSF was positioned in the main market.” Another survivor reported to human rights investigators that RSF “fighters were just shouting and shooting anywhere, so that is how many people were killed.”

The Zamzam camp was created in 2004 to hold displaced persons fleeing the war in Darfur. It is located south of El Fasher, the North Darfur state capital. The camp has transformed over the years into an “urban-like setting,” with many children who have never known life outside the camp. According to the UN, roughly 500,000 people lived at Zamzam as of April 2025.

Sudan has signed but not ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and therefore is not a state party. However, the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes in Darfur under UN Security Council Resolution 1593.

From JURIST, Dec. 18. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Note: Resolution 1593 of 2005 provided the basis for the indictment of Darfur militia leader Ali Kushayb, who was recently convicted by the ICC.

Photo via UN News

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) identified at least 150 “clusters of objects consistent with human remains” in and around El Fasher between Oct. 26, when the RSF claimed to have taken full control of El Fasher, and Nov. 28. They identified the clusters as likely human remains, based on their size, the timing of their appearance, and proximity to reddish ground discoloration that later turned brown, consistent with blood oxidation. In some cases, the RSF’s own social media posts corroborated the presence of human remains at the locations.

Researchers documented 38 instances of “reddish discoloration consistent with blood or other bodily fluids,” and evidence of ongoing efforts to destroy remains through burning and burial.

The report concludes “to high confidence” that the RSF conducted door-to-door killings in the Daraja Oula neighborhood, the city’s last major civilian refuge, and targeted people attempting to flee the city through the earthen barriers, or berms, that had been built around El Fasher during the months-long siege.

The researchers wrote:

HRL assesses that during this time of restricted access, RSF has systematically killed and disposed of a number of objects consistent with human remains likely in the tens of thousands. The evidence presented in this report cannot be used to estimate the number of people who have died, but it can be used to demonstrate that largescale and systematic mass killing and body disposal has occurred and is occurring on a scale that has not ever been seen before in very high resolution commercial satellite imagery analyzed by civilians.

Casualty estimates for El Fasher range widely, but Doctors Without Borders said the low number of survivors reaching safety at nearby displacement camps—roughly 10,000 of an estimated 260,000 people in El Fasher before the assault—suggests most civilians were killed, died, or remain trapped. Citing the Yale analysis, the humanitarian group said observations “point to a catastrophic scenario.”

By late November, 38% of the identified body clusters were no longer visible in satellite imagery, suggesting systematic disposal operations, the Yale researchers said.

The findings add to mounting evidence of atrocities in Sudan’s civil war, which began in April 2023 when fighting erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces. The RSF has since advanced into the Kordofan region, seizing the strategic Heglig oilfield. Peace efforts have stalled after the Sudanese Armed Forces rejected a US-backed truce proposal in November, calling it biased; the RSF nominally accepted the plan but has continued military operations.

The researchers called on the UN Security Council to immediately secure access to El Fasher for humanitarian assistance and evidence collection, writing:

The international community, including the UN Security Council, must immediately secure access to El-Fasher to provide humanitarian assistance to survivors and to collect whatever evidence of the killing still remains. Time is of the essence for both those still living and for the evidence left by those who have died.

From JURIST, Dec. 17. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Photo: Google/Airbus via JURIST

Meanwhile, the Sudanese army, no paragon of peace either, has snubbed the latest US-led truce proposal as biased towards the UAE, which is said to be arming the RSF, and appears to have lost confidence in White House adviser Massad Boulos. Still, with US President Donald Trump promising to personally wade into mediation, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal casting the conflict as a sovereign army defending civilians against a genocidal militia, not a war between two rival (and equally bad) generals. Of course, that overly convenient framing ignores the state’s long record of cultivating and empowering the RSF (until their falling out in the 2023 attempted coup), not to mention the awkward fact that the two forces joined hands to stage the 2021 coup that derailed Sudan’s democratic transition.

From The New Humanitarian, Nov. 28. Slightly edited, internal links added.

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