The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network strongly stands against the acts of genocide and ethnic targeting currently being perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against African, indigenous communities in El Fasher and its surroundings, following its takeover of the city on October 26, 2025.
El Fasher city has been the host of thousands of internally displaced people from other parts of Darfur, as a result of ongoing violence in this troubled region, for the past 22 years. Its fall marks a significant escalation of atrocities due to a brutal campaign of attacks, drone strikes, and sieges against the civilian population, clearly amounting to genocide, for the past 18 months. In this period, the RSF has orchestrated the deliberate blockage of critical humanitarian aid and food from reaching the city, weaponizing mass starvation as a tool of war. This is in addition to the systematic use of sexual violence and abduction of civilians. The constant bombardment of the area has also exacerbated internal displacement, with women, children, and the elderly bearing the brunt of this situation.
According to credible reports, the RSF has now completely taken control of the city, murdering innocent civilians in massive numbers. On October 27, 2025, RSF soldiers mercilessly executed civilians in houses and those seeking refuge in Rashid dormitory, El Fasher University. On the same date, SIHA also received testimonies that over 300 patients were executed in Al Saudi and Plan Hospitals, among them pregnant women and children. According to the eyewitness account of a health practitioner from Plan Hospital, “the wounded and injured were executed before my eyes.”
Thousands of people are fleeing from the city south into Zamzam IDP camp, which is also under RSF control, and west, into Tawilah. With a huge influx of internally displaced people heading to Tawilah town (presumably under the control of the Sudan Liberation Army – Abdul Wahid al-Nur), it is overwhelmed with rapidly deteriorating humanitarian conditions and is vulnerable to a spillover in violence.
We have received reports that the road between Tawilah and El Fasher is equally unsafe, as has been the status quo for the past 18 months. SIHA has received distressing eyewitness reports of the RSF intercepting groups on the way, subjecting them to beating, looting, and racial slurs. Eyewitnesses give further accounts of women being subjected to violent and invasive body searches as a clear act of sexual assault. From October 27, 2025, to the current date, women and girls continue to be subjected to abduction on this road, with RSF soldiers contacting their families for ransom. Many missing women and children have not reached Tawilah, and their whereabouts are unknown.
The clear ethnic targeting of African indigenous communities such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa continues to be a pattern of the RSF’s crimes. On October 26, 2025, eyewitnesses and survivors who had arrived in Tawilah gave accounts of the RSF seizing groups on the way and separating them on the basis of their ethnicity. In a particular account, men identified as being from the Zaghawa tribe were lined up, accused of being part of the Joint Forces allied with SAF. They were summarily executed on the spot.
At SIHA, this takeover is no surprise and confirms our worst fears, despite our numerous calls to action. The El Fasher massacre is not the first, and mirrors the systematic killing of over 15,000 people from the Masalit community in El Geneina (June 2023) and in Ardamata (November 2023) by the RSF. It is on this premise that we continue to advocate against the RSF’s campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Further, in SIHA’s documentation on El Fasher dated August 31, 2025, we had already noted an alarming increase in enforced disappearance cases, abductions, sexual violence, and summary executions committed by the RSF, as early warning signs of what was to come.
The international and regional community is complicit in its silence in failing to swiftly respond to and protect the people of Darfur. The particular silence of the African Union is a grave abdication of its responsibility to protect African lives and uphold justice, noting the deliberate targeting of indigenous African communities in this conflict. This is in direct violation of the African Union’s Constitutive Act, which emphasizes the protection, safety, and security of African people. As a result, the RSF’s strategic tactics of terror, subjugation, and impunity over the past 22 years have grown bolder in the absence of justice and accountability. We further question the effectiveness of the International Criminal Court since the beginning of this conflict in 2023, for its failure to hold the current perpetrators accountable in Darfur. Finally, we stress that this brutality would not be possible without the extensive supply of arms that the RSF enjoys from vested, external actors.
It cannot be overstated – the RSF’s project of genocide and ethnic targeting has been an endless cycle for the past 22 years and requires our urgent response.
As a feminist and frontline women’s network, we call on the United Nations and the African Union to:
- Immediately intervene in El Fasher to ensure the cessation of hostilities and compliance with United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2736 (2024);
- Immediately deploy a peacekeeping mission to protect the lives of Sudanese people at stake and to rescue those caught in active hostilities in Darfur;
- Immediately protect all service providers giving vital assistance to civilians on the ground, including women and women-led initiatives at the frontline;
- Immediately demand that all external actors in this conflict stop supplying weapons to the warring parties, particularly in Darfur, in line with the arms embargo; and
- Immediately restore the flow of critical humanitarian aid, food, sexual, reproductive health, and psychosocial support services to North Darfur, including El Fasher City, and local communities in dire need, in Sudan.
At this critical point, the lives of the people of El Fasher and North Darfur are in your hands. We call on the international and regional communities to end this deadly genocide and to end this violence. The lives of the Sudanese people depend on your urgent action.
