Protection of Civilians Between the Duty to Warn and the Crime of Forced Confinement
South Kordofan – Sudan
Sweden | 23 December 2025
The Al Fjr Organization for Peace, Development and Justice expresses its profound concern over the rapidly escalating military situation in South Kordofan State, particularly in the cities of Kadugli and Dilling, as well as El Obeid in North Kordofan and the surrounding areas, amid serious indications of the potential outbreak of large-scale hostilities within densely populated civilian areas. Such developments pose grave and immediate risks to civilians, threatening their lives, physical safety, and human dignity.
In this context, the Organization closely monitors, with deep concern, the dangerous divergence in the conduct of the parties to the conflict toward the civilian population. The Rapid Support Forces and allied forces within the Tasis Alliance have issued public statements and warnings calling on civilians to leave areas of contact and distance themselves from military operations in Kadugli and Dilling. These calls were also extended to El Obeid, North Kordofan, with references to corridors described as “safe,” purportedly to reduce the risks facing civilians.
Conversely, the Organization has documented statements and threats issued by the Sudanese Armed Forces and their allies, in particular the “Northern Shield” militia led by Abu Aqla Keikel, which explicitly prohibit civilians from leaving El Obeid, accompanied by threats to use force against anyone attempting to do so. This conduct stands in direct contradiction to any claims of civilian protection and effectively transforms civilians into forcibly confined populations within the theater of military operations.
This contradiction does not merely reflect a difference in tactics or military rhetoric; rather, it reveals a decisive legal and moral fault line between conduct that may, in principle, fall within the duty to warn and take precautions, and conduct that amounts to a serious violation of international humanitarian law, directly undermining the protections afforded to civilians during armed conflict.
International humanitarian law, in particular Article 57 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, obliges parties to a conflict to take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population, including the issuance of effective advance warnings when circumstances permit. Accordingly, calling on civilians to leave areas of hostilities is not, in itself, unlawful, provided that such departure is entirely voluntary, accompanied by genuine and effective safety guarantees, and free from coercion, deception, or subsequent exposure to danger.
However, this duty in no way absolves parties to the conflict of their responsibility to protect civilians who choose to remain, nor does it justify the launching of indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, or the transformation of so-called evacuation zones or safe corridors into areas of targeting or siege.
By contrast, forcibly preventing civilians from leaving areas threatened by fighting, and threatening them with the use of weapons should they attempt to escape, constitutes a clear violation of the principle of civilian protection enshrined in Article 13 of Additional Protocol II. Depending on the circumstances and consequences, such conduct may amount to the crime of using civilians as human shields, prohibited under customary international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The confinement of civilians within El Obeid amid anticipated military operations cannot be justified by any legitimate military necessity and represents a direct exploitation of their presence to restrict the adversary’s movement or secure military advantage, thereby entailing individual criminal responsibility for those responsible.
The Organization further affirms that forced displacement is prohibited under international law and may be permitted only in cases of the most compelling security necessity or for the protection of civilians themselves, and strictly subject to stringent conditions. These include full voluntariness, the provision of genuinely safe—not merely nominal—corridors, and guaranteed access to adequate shelter, food, and humanitarian assistance. Any call to leave that is used as a pretext for clearing areas, altering their demographic composition, or carried out without these guarantees constitutes a compound violation no less serious than the direct targeting of civilians.
The Al Fjr Organization for Peace, Development and Justice underscores that serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law—including the targeting of civilians, their forcible confinement within conflict zones, the use of civilians as human shields, or exposing them to foreseeable risks without legitimate military necessity—may amount to international crimes that are not subject to statutes of limitation and require individual criminal accountability before competent national or international judicial mechanisms.
The Organization reaffirms its ongoing commitment to monitoring and documenting these violations and to working with relevant international and regional mechanisms in support of victims’ rights, and in pursuit of dismantling the structures of impunity, as an indispensable condition for achieving a just and sustainable peace in Sudan.
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