The UK must use its clout to help stem the shocking violence in Darfur
3 min read
Late last month, reports began to emerge that the city of el-Fasher in Sudan had fallen to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia who are one of the two main belligerents in the country’s horrifying ongoing civil war.
The city’s fall was not unexpected – el-Fasher was the last stronghold of the Sudanese army in the vast region of Darfur and had been under siege for 17 months, with some 300,000 civilians trapped in increasingly desperate humanitarian conditions.
What has unfolded since the city fell has been horrifying. Satellite analysis from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab has found evidence consistent with “mass killings” in the city. UNHCR officials are recounting reports from those who have fled el-Fasher of “widespread ethnically and politically motivated killings, including reports of people with disabilities being executed because they were unable to flee, and others being shot as they tried to escape”.
The Yale lab’s director Nathaniel Raymond has said that he had “never seen a level of violence against an area like we are seeing now. This is only comparable with a Rwandan-style killing in the first 24 hours”. There are also grave concerns about the protection of women and girls in el-Fasher and surrounding areas of Darfur, following very high levels of conflict-related sexual violence over recent months.
The UK has, I believe, a critical role to play in stemming this shocking violence. The UK is the UN Security Council’s ‘penholder’ on Sudan and on civilian protection, and so can play a vital convening role at this time of emergency.
The UK government must also use its relationships with the members of the ‘Quad’ – the US, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia – to push them to use their influence with the belligerents to stop the violence. It is only a matter of weeks since these Quad countries agreed to jointly call for peace, despite widespread (if contested) reports that the latter three nations had been backing differing sides in the conflict. Now they must make good on their words.
We live in an interconnected world. Whether relating to climate or conflict, events far beyond the UK’s shores have real impacts on us. Earlier this year the International Organization for Migration estimated that 11.3 million people had been displaced in Sudan. That number is only growing, spurred by spiking violence. It is therefore unsurprising that the number of Sudanese unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the UK has increased massively over recent months. And experts have suggested that, if the international community continues to fail to promote stability and peace in Sudan, it will become a hotbed for international terrorism.
This conflict has been raging since 2023 and is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. As many people as live in Australia are experiencing acute hunger in Sudan. It should not take horrific atrocities of the kind now unfolding in el-Fasher to draw the world’s attention to this war. Unless we act now, in 10 years’ time we will be asked why we chose to look away.
Anneliese Dodds is the Labour and Co-operative MP for Oxford East, and former Minister of State for Development and Minister of State for Women and Equalities.
