According to diplomats on Wednesday, the UN Security Council is expected to vote on a resolution sponsored by the British that calls for an end to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) blockade of al-Fashir in Sudan’s North Darfur area on Thursday.
De-escalation in and around the city, an immediate end to hostilities, and the evacuation of all fighters who pose a threat to civilian safety and security are all demanded in the draft text.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Britain requested that the 15-member council have a vote on the draft. For a resolution to be passed, it must receive nine votes in favour and not be vetoed by China, Russia, the US, the UK, or France.
The worst displacement crisis in history was caused by a war that broke out in April of last year in Sudan between the Sudanese Army (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The final significant city outside of the RSF’s dominion in the vast western Darfur region is Al-Fashir. After storming through four more Darfur state capitals last year, the RSF and its supporters were held accountable for a wave of abuses and racially motivated killings in West Darfur against non-Arab populations.
About 800,000 people in al-Fashir are in “extreme and immediate danger,” according to top U.N. officials who warned the Security Council in April, as the violence escalates and poses a threat to “unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur.”
The draft Security Council resolution “demands that all parties to the conflict ensure the protection of civilians, including by allowing civilians wishing to move within and out of Al-Fashir to safer areas to do so.”
It also calls on countries “to refrain from external interference which seeks to foment conflict and instability and instead to support efforts for a durable peace and reminds all parties to the conflict and member states who facilitate the transfers of arms and military material to Darfur of their obligations to comply with the arms embargo measures.”
The United States claims that in addition to the fighting parties, the RSF and its allies have perpetrated crimes against humanity and ethnic genocide. According to the U.N., half of Sudan’s population—nearly 25 million people—need humanitarian assistance, and eight million have abandoned their homes as hunger levels are rising.
According to a U.N. sanctions monitoring assessment seen by Reuters in January, between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in one city alone in Sudan’s West Darfur area last year in ethnic violence by the RSF and associated Arab militia.
The Security Council will vote on a draft resolution that “calls on the parties to the conflict to seek an immediate cessation of hostilities, leading to a sustainable resolution to the conflict, through dialogue.”
