Joint Oral Statement, Urgent Debate to address the human rights situation in and around El Obeid, North Kordofan in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Sudan, 62d session of the Human Rights Council, 15 June – 7 July
Mr. President –
As the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) encircle El Obeid in North Kordofan, this Council must call on the RSF and allied groups to stop their assault. Commanders must not issue orders violating international law and soldiers must not implement them. This Council must also urge the United Arab Emirates to stop its support, including its military support, to the RSF.
This week, Amnesty International issued a report detailing the RSF’s atrocities against civilians during its attack on El Fasher in 2025: siege and engineered starvation, abuses targeting non-Arab communities through torture, killings, rape, and detention, including women and children. These actions in the RSF playbook, repeated in El Fasher, constitute crimes against humanity of extermination, persecution on the basis of ethnicity and gender, and amount to ethnic cleansing.
To protect civilians in Sudan and prevent further abuses and crimes, all states with leverage must, individually and collectively:
- push for an immediate nationwide ceasefire;
- support and deploy an international protection force;
- expand the arms embargo on Darfur to the rest of the country; and
- Publicly condemn actors fuelling the conflict, including the UAE.
All states must also:
- enforce the embargo, so weapons manufactured in China, Russia, Türkiye, the UAE, Canada, and France stop appearing on the battlefield;
- surge humanitarian assistance and support and protect humanitarian actors; and
- support all existing accountability mechanisms for Sudan, including this Council’s Fact-Finding Mission. This must include more ambitious efforts to prepare case files and, where evidence and jurisdiction exist, to prosecute all those responsible for atrocities.
People in and displaced from Sudan deserve no less.
