The Hague court’s Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan warns civil war ‘has reached an intolerable state’.
A senior International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity” are being committed in war-ravaged Sudan’s western Darfur region.
ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan presented her assessment before the United Nations Security Council on Thursday of the devastating conflict, which has raged since 2023, killing more than 40,000 people and displacing 13 million others.
Khan said the depth of suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur “has reached an intolerable state”, with famine escalating and hospitals, humanitarian convoys and other civilian infrastructure being targeted.
She said it was “difficult to find appropriate words to describe the depth of suffering in Darfur”.
“On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur,” she said.
The prosecutor’s office focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, Khan said, interviewing victims who fled to neighbouring Chad.
She detailed an “intolerable” humanitarian situation, with apparent targeting of hospitals and humanitarian convoys, while warning that “famine is escalating” as aid is unable to reach “those in dire need”.
“People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponised,” Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become “common practice”.
In June, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan warned that both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had escalated the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas and weaponised humanitarian relief, amid the devastating consequences of the civil war.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan had told the Security Council in January that there were grounds to believe both parties may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in the region, while the administration of then-US President Joe Biden determined that the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide.
The Security Council had previously referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005, with some 300,000 people killed during conflict in the region in the 2000s.
In 2023, the ICC opened a new probe into war crimes in Darfur after a new conflict erupted between the SAF and RSF.
The RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide two decades ago in the vast western region.
ICC judges are expected to deliver their first decision on crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago in the case of Ali Mohamed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kosheib, after the trial ended in 2024.
“I wish to be clear to those on the ground in Darfur now, to those who are inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population – they may feel a sense of impunity at this moment, as Ali Kosheib may have felt in the past,” said Khan.
“But we are working intensively to ensure that the Ali Kosheib trial represents only the first of many in relation to this situation at the International Criminal Court,” added Khan.