ICC prosecutor urges world to 'stop the bleeding' in Sudan before region spirals out of control
NEW YORK: Violence in Sudan has continued to rise over the past six months, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor said Monday, with reports of rape, crimes against children and persecution on a massive scale.
“Terror has become a common currency,” Karim Khan told a UN Security Council meeting, “and terror is not felt by people with guns, but by people running, very often with nothing on their feet, hungry “.
War between rival military factions has raged in Sudan for more than a year. Since it began in April 2023, approximately 19,000 people have been killed. More than 10 million are internally displaced and more than 2 million have fled to neighboring countries as refugees, making it the world's largest displacement crisis.
The country is on the brink of famine as a severe food crisis looms, with many families said to be already often going days without food.
Khan said the ICC prioritizes investigations into allegations of crimes against and affecting children and gender-based crimes. These “profound abuses of human rights, mass violations of personal dignity” continue to be fueled by “the supply of arms, financial support from various sectors and political triangulations that lead to inaction by the international community,” he added.
His comments came during the most recent semi-annual briefing to the Security Council on the court's Darfur-related activities. Almost 20 years after the council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC, the court issued arrest warrants against former president Omar Al-Bashir, former ministers Ahmad Mohammed Harun and Abdel Raheem Mohammed Hussein, and the former commander-in-chief of the ICC. The Movement for Justice and Equality, Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain, remain outstanding.
Khan said such failures to execute arrest warrants for the accused have contributed to several unintended consequences, including “the climate of impunity and the outbreak of violence that began in April (2023) and continues today, (in which) belligerents I think he can get away with murder and rape; the feeling that the bandwidth of the (Security) Council, the bandwidth of states, is too limited, is too preoccupied with other epicenters of conflict, hot wars in other parts of the world; that we have lost sight of the plight of the people of Darfur, somehow forgotten our responsibilities under the UN Charter; (and) the sense that Darfur or Sudan is a lawless zone where people can act with abandon on their worst instincts, their base instincts, the politics of hate and power, opportunities for profit.”
He asked the council members to “turn back on the merits” of the appeal to justice.
In comments aimed at both warring factions, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Force, as well as “those who finance them, supply them with weapons, give orders, get certain advantages”, Khan said his office was investigating and “using resources as much as possible effectively we can to ensure that the events of last April are subject to the principle of international humanitarian law and the imperative that every human life be seen as having equal value”.
He said that after “many difficulties” Sudanese authorities are finally cooperating with ICC investigators who have been able to enter Port Sudan, collect evidence and engage with General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces and forces Sudanese armies. the country's de facto leader.
“But a sip doesn't make a summer,” Khan added, stressing the need for “continued and in-depth cooperation with the Sudanese armed forces, with General Al-Burhan and his government moving forward.”
He said “one concrete way in which this commitment to accountability and this lack of tolerance for impunity can be demonstrated is the proper enforcement of court orders,” including the arrest of former minister Harun and his arraignment.
However, Khan said the latest significant efforts to engage with the leadership of the Rapid Support Force have so far proved futile.
Meanwhile, he said, ICC investigators have visited neighboring Chad several times and collected “very valuable testimonial evidence” from displaced Sudanese nationals living there as refugees.
They met with representatives of Sudanese civil society in Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Europe, he added, “to get and preserve their accounts and stories, to analyze and put them together , to see what crimes, if anything, show and who is responsible for the hell on earth that is being unleashed so stubbornly, so persistently against the people of Darfur.”
Khan said his office had used technological tools to gather and collate various forms of evidence from phones, videos and audio recordings and that this was “proving to be extremely critical in breaking through the veil of impunity”.
The collective efforts of investigators, analysts, lawyers and members of civil society have resulted in significant progress, he added, and expressed hope that he would soon be able to announce that arrest warrants had been sought for those believed to be most responsible. . for crimes in the country.
Meanwhile, Khan raised a wider alarm about what he described as “a trapeze of chaos in that part of the continent”.
He continued: “If one draws a line from the Mediterranean of Libya, to the Red Sea of Sudan, and then draws a line to Sub-Saharan Africa and then to the Atlantic, Boko Haram is causing instability, chaos. and the suffering in Nigeria, and then back to Sudan, (we) see the map and the countries that are at risk of being disturbed or destabilized by this concentration of chaos and suffering.”
He warned members of the Security Council that, in addition to concerns about the rights of the people of Darfur, “we are reaching a tipping point where a Pandora's box of ethnic, racial, religious, sectarian (and) commercial interests will be unleashed .”
He added that “they will no longer be susceptible to the political powers of the great states of the world, not even of this council. Real action is needed now to stop the bleeding…in Sudan.”
