When Volker Türk stood before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on 9 February 2026, his message was blunt and accusatory: what happened in El Fasher last October was not an unforeseeable tragedy, but a preventable human rights catastrophe. After 18 months of siege, starvation and bombardment, Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces and allied militias launched a final offensive that, in a matter of days, left thousands dead and forced tens of thousands more to flee in terror. The failure, Türk made clear, was not only that of the perpetrators, but of an international community that had been warned repeatedly and did nothing.
El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, had long been a city under pressure. Türk told the Council that his Office had sounded the alarm for more than a year about the risk of mass atrocities there, documenting patterns of abuse during earlier operations, including an RSF offensive against the Zamzam camp for displaced people in April 2025. Yet despite clear signals, the siege tightened. When the final assault came, it unfolded with devastating speed. Survivors described a city overwhelmed by violence so intense that, as Türk put it, thousands were killed in a matter of days.
Since his previous briefing, Türk has visited Sudan and met survivors of the El Fasher offensive. He described rarely encountering people so deeply traumatized. His staff interviewed more than 140 victims and witnesses in Sudan’s Northern State and in eastern Chad, where many had fled. Their testimonies, collected independently and across vast distances, converged on the same picture: mass killings, summary executions, rape, torture, disappearances and abductions carried out with near-total impunity.
One account, Türk said, stood out for its consistency and horror. People who had fled to locations thousands of kilometres apart all described the same event: the mass killing of hundreds of civilians sheltering at El Fasher University. Others spoke of attacks on hospitals and healthcare workers, and of bodies piled along the roads leading out of the city. One survivor likened the scene to the Day of Judgment, an image Türk repeated to underscore the apocalyptic scale of what had unfolded.
Ethnicity, according to the testimonies, played a decisive role. Türk said his Office heard convincing evidence that some victims were targeted specifically because they were non-Arab, particularly members of the Zaghawa ethnic group. Hate speech and dehumanizing rhetoric, he warned, continue to act as catalysts for such violence, used by leaders to justify atrocities, mobilize fighters and deepen communal divisions. During his visit, he said, he saw the effects of that language etched into the faces and stories of survivors.
Sexual violence emerged as a central and systematic feature of the RSF campaign. Türk told delegates that rape and gang rape were used as weapons of war against women and girls. Survivors recounted sexual assaults during abductions and as they attempted to flee, with RSF fighters and allied militias targeting women and girls during searches and checkpoints. Türk described these accounts as consistent, harrowing and deeply disturbing.
Abductions for ransom were another hallmark of the offensive. As people fled El Fasher, RSF fighters seized men and adolescent boys deemed to be of fighting age, though women and children were also taken. Families were forced to pay exorbitant sums for their release, and thousands of people remain missing. Some are believed to have been killed; others are thought to be held in inhumane detention conditions, subjected to torture and ill-treatment. Türk pointed in particular to Tagris prison in Nyala, South Darfur, where thousands were reportedly transferred and where conditions are known to be horrendous.
Detention practices extended beyond suspected fighters. According to Türk, the RSF and its allies detained people perceived to be affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces, as well as government officials, doctors, journalists, teachers and local humanitarian volunteers. Former detainees told UN investigators that more than 2,000 men were held inside El Fasher Children’s Hospital, a facility transformed into a site of mass detention. Those who died in custody, Türk said, were reportedly buried near the hospital.
The recruitment and use of children by the RSF was also documented, either through coercion or pressure exerted on entire communities. Taken together, Türk said, the patterns of abuse left little doubt about the legal characterization of the crimes. He noted that the International Criminal Court had informed the UN Security Council in January that it assessed both war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed in El Fasher during the culmination of the siege. His Office’s own findings, soon to be published in a public report, fully align with that conclusion.
Responsibility for these atrocity crimes, Türk stressed, lies squarely with the RSF and their allies and supporters. But his briefing did not spare the wider international community. Standing by, he warned, while armed groups commit well-flagged international crimes guarantees only that worse atrocities will follow. The danger, he said, is not confined to Darfur.
Türk voiced particular concern about the Kordofan region, where fighting has intensified since the fall of El Fasher. Although Sudanese Armed Forces and allied groups recently broke sieges on Kadugli and Dilling, drone strikes by both sides have continued. In just over two weeks up to 6 February, UN documentation recorded 90 civilians killed and 142 injured by drone attacks carried out by both the RSF and the SAF. Markets, residential neighbourhoods, health facilities and even a World Food Programme convoy were hit.
Nearly three years into the conflict, Türk said, violations of international humanitarian and human rights law remain flagrant and unaddressed. During his visit, he personally witnessed damage caused by RSF attacks on the Merowe dam and hydroelectric power station, once responsible for supplying 70 percent of Sudan’s electricity. Repeated drone strikes have disrupted power and water supplies, with severe consequences for healthcare and civilian life.
Türk urged states to reflect honestly on what they could have done to prevent the slaughter in El Fasher, and what they will do now to prevent its repetition elsewhere. He called for concrete measures to protect civilians, including commitments not to target residential areas, to allow unimpeded humanitarian aid, to end arbitrary detention and to treat detainees humanely. He pressed for the arms embargo currently limited to Darfur to be extended across all of Sudan, warning that advanced drone weaponry is making civilians unsafe everywhere.
Despite the bleakness of his account, Türk ended on a note of guarded hope. During his visit, he said, one truth stood out: the Sudanese people’s struggle for peace, justice and freedom is still alive. They, he told the Council, hold the key to sustainable peace. Whether the international community will finally match their resilience with decisive action remains the unanswered question hanging over El Fasher’s dead.
