The head of the UN criticizes Sudan’s RSF, and Britain will ask the Security Council to take action

According to reports, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces attacked citizens on Friday. In response, Britain said it would push for a U.N. Security Council decision on the war, which has been going on for more than 18 months.

A power battle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led to war in the middle of April 2023, just before a planned change to civilian rule. The war caused the biggest migration problem in the history of the world.

During this war, there have been waves of violence based on ethnicity, which is mostly blamed on the RSF. Last month, activists say that the RSF killed at least 124 people in a village in El Gezira State. This was one of the deadliest events in the war.

People from the RSF say that the army is armed citizens in Gezira. In the past, the RSF has denied hurting people in Sudan and blamed other groups for the actions.

“Reports of large numbers of civilians being killed, detained, and displaced, acts of sexual violence against women and girls, the looting of homes and markets, and the burning of farms,” a U.N. spokesman said, made Guterres very distressed.

“These actions could be very bad violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law.” “Those who commit such serious crimes must be held responsible,” said Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN.

The 15-member Security Council will meet in Sudan on November 12 to talk about “scaling up aid delivery and ensuring greater protection of civilians by all sides.” Britain took over as president of the Security Council for November on Friday.

At a news conference, Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said, “We will be shortly introducing a draft Security Council resolution… to facilitate progress on this.”

The draft would be about “developing a compliance mechanism for the warring parties’ commitments they made on the protection of civilians in Jeddah over a year ago in 2023 and ways to support mediation efforts to deliver a ceasefire, even if we start local ceasefires before moving to a national one.”

To become law, a measure needs at least 9 votes in favor and can’t be blocked by the US, France, Britain, Russia, or China.

Officials in Sudan gave the UN and aid groups permission to use the Adre border crossing with Chad to get to Darfur with emergency aid for three months. That permission is set to end in the middle of November.

The government of Sudan, which is backed by the army, is committed to making it easier for help to get to all parts of the country, even those held by the RSF, Sudan’s U.N. ambassador said on Monday.

Monday, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, said that the Sudanese government should decide if the Adre crossing will stay open past mid-November. He also said that putting pressure on the government would be “inappropriate.”

“We’re categorically opposed to the politicization of humanitarian assistance,” said the man. “We believe that any humanitarian assistance should be conducted and delivered solely with the central authorities in the loop.”