Geneva – Human Rights Council, 30 September 2025
During the 60th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Coalition of Sudanese Human Rights Organizations and their international allies submitted a written statement (A/HRC/60/NGO/98) exposing the scale of atrocities and grave violations committed by the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied militias against civilians. The statement stressed that these crimes amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, requiring urgent and decisive international action to protect the Sudanese people.
The statement emphasized that women and girls in Sudan have been subjected to horrific abuses, including sexual violence, gang rape, and abduction, particularly in Darfur, Kordofan, and Khartoum. These violations are being used deliberately as weapons of war to terrorize communities, in blatant breach of international conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children have also been victims of forced recruitment, denied access to education, and separated from their families, while many others have been killed or injured in indiscriminate bombings of schools and residential areas.
The statement further addressed the crisis of forced displacement and refugee flows, noting that over ten million civilians—most of them women and children—have been forced to flee their homes internally or seek refuge in neighboring countries since the conflict began in April 2023. It stressed that the Sudanese Army’s deliberate policy of aerial bombardment, siege, and terror amounts to forced displacement in direct violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Moreover, the Sudanese Army has destroyed hundreds of schools and health centers, converting some into military facilities, depriving millions of children of their right to education and causing the collapse of Sudan’s already fragile health system. The statement also documented attacks against humanitarian warehouses and relief centers, including those of the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF, in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
The written intervention also highlighted the extrajudicial executions carried out against civilians based on political or ethnic affiliation, particularly in Darfur and Kordofan. These crimes, coupled with the absence of domestic accountability mechanisms, reinforce a culture of impunity. The ongoing military campaign has devastated Sudan’s development indicators, causing unprecedented setbacks in health, education, food security, and access to water, in direct violation of the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development.
In conclusion, the coalition urged the Human Rights Council to condemn all violations committed against civilians, strengthen the mandate of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to monitor and report on Sudan, and exert pressure on the military authorities in Port Sudan and the Sudanese Armed Forces to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid. The statement further called for international investigative mechanisms to be granted access to victims—particularly survivors of sexual violence and extrajudicial killings—and pressed for accountability through international justice.
The coalition stressed that Sudan’s tragedy is a true test of the international system’s credibility, underscoring that protecting civilians and ensuring accountability is not a political choice but a moral and legal obligation that cannot be postponed.