Geneva – Human Rights Council, 1 October 2025
On the sidelines of the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Sudanese
Human Rights Organizations Alliance organized a parallel international event where it
presented an extensive report entitled “War Crimes Against Education – The Systematic
Destruction of a Generation’s Future.” The report documents grave violations committed by
the Port Sudan military authorities and allied militias against the education sector in Sudan
from the outbreak of the conflict on 15 April 2023 until 25 February 2025.
The report revealed that no fewer than 726 attacks targeted schools, institutes, and
universities, including 136 airstrikes and 61 artillery shellings, which resulted in the
complete destruction of 214 educational institutions and partial damage to 315 others.
Meanwhile, 950 educational facilities were converted into military barracks, detention
centers, or weapons storage sites. These attacks led to the killing, injury, arrest, and abduction
of more than 2,000 students and teachers, while approximately 11 million Sudanese
children have been deprived of education, including 3.6 million at risk of returning to
illiteracy.
The report further detailed that the violations extended beyond the destruction of schools to
include the forced recruitment of more than 20,000 children, sexual violence against
female students, and the looting of printing presses and warehouses, which brought the
educational process to near total collapse. According to the report, 6.4 million children were
forcibly displaced from their studies, while more than 193 schools were transformed into
makeshift shelters for internally displaced persons.
The documentation emphasized that the targeting of education in Sudan is not the result of
incidental acts but rather a systematic policy aimed at destroying the future of
generations, by militarizing schools and deliberately turning them into military targets. The
report classified these violations as war crimes and crimes against humanity under
international law, holding the top military leadership led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan directly
accountable.