Sudan is caught in another genocide. Why isn’t the world acting?

Irwin Cotler is a former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada and founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR) who created the Save Darfur All-Party Canadian Parliamentary Coalition in 2003.

Mutasim Ali is a senior legal adviser at the RWCHR who survived the 2003-2005 genocide in Darfur.

Yonah Diamond is a senior legal adviser at the RWCHR.

We are bearing witness to another genocide in Sudan – atrocities that were forewarned but have been allowed to continue by global indifference and inaction.

In 2023, we were joined by leading experts in warning of the imminent risk of genocide in North Darfur, and later reached formal conclusions identifying the perpetrators in major legal inquiries and a complaint to the International Criminal Court.

Since then, Sudan has become the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe. The figures are staggering: early estimates tallied 150,000 people who have been killed amidst the world’s worst hunger and forced displacement crisis. Two-thirds of the population require humanitarian assistance, and nearly half the country is suffering from acute hunger. More than 20 areas in Darfur and Kordofan are at risk of famine.

UN rights council orders urgent inquiry into alleged abuses in Sudan’s al-Obeid

Nine months ago, as soon as the North Darfur city of El Fasher fell, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – the militia at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces – killed thousands of starving civilians in a matter of days, leaving bloodstains that were picked up by satellite imagery. Tens of thousands remain unaccounted for; they are dead, missing, or displaced.

The conflict in Sudan has metastasized for 39 months. The RSF and allies have relentlessly targeted non-Arab communities, including in El Fasher – atrocities the UN has characterized as bearing the “hallmarks of genocide.” What’s more, this is yet another genocide to occur in Darfur this century, preceded by clear signs of incitement against the same communities that were attacked two decades ago. The RSF and its allied militias are using similar tactics as in the past, including by targeting infrastructure essential for survival, such as water and power sources.

Today, with the RSF now having near-total control of Sudan’s western region, every international forum, including the G7, is warning of repeat atrocities in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan. Yet this emergency putting hundreds of thousands at risk in El Obeid – including many who were displaced from El Fasher and journeyed across the desert – has been met with global indifference.

What is clear is that the cycle of violence will continue without serious action. One would expect the mass destruction and suffering to mobilize urgent collective action, but the international community’s response remains astonishingly inadequate.

The violence has persisted unchecked for so long due to the perpetrators’ unrestricted access to arms, drones, mercenaries, logistical support, and financial resources from powerful external actors, enabling them to commit atrocities with impunity. The lack of political will allows these atrocities to proliferate, despite the overwhelming evidence of the actors driving the violence.

Mass atrocities looming in another Sudanese city, UN says

These imminent atrocities carry an obligation to act and prevent the violence from spreading even beyond Sudan’s borders. As part of the G7, Canada can lead the world to fulfilling that obligation by taking simple steps toward accountability.

First, while the G7’s recent call on external actors to cease supporting the warring parties is welcome, more concrete action is needed. Canada should work with allies to disrupt the supply lines fuelling the atrocities, calling out and imposing costs and targeted sanctions on external actors and entities supporting the genocidaires. The European Union’s recent move targeting the gold trade, a critical driver of conflict, is instructive and replicable in this regard.

Second, Canada should leverage its influence to advance accountability at the international and regional levels, including at the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice, or through a special tribunal to hold those responsible to account, including for aiding and abetting atrocities.

Third, while the G7’s recent call to expand the UN arms embargo is commendable, it is essential to begin collaboration with the African Union to monitor the existing UN Security Council arms embargo on Darfur.

Finally, Canada should work within all multilateral forums to promote localized ceasefires in Sudanese regions with a high risk of mass atrocities. These represent urgent, life-saving interventions that open humanitarian corridors, protect civilians, and strengthen broader peace efforts already under way.

The people of Sudan deserve our concerted action. We must work to halt these imminent repeat atrocities and protect civilians before another city is lost.