Sudan Update

June 9th – June 15th 2026

 
Washington, DC- We write with extreme concern and outrage as the violence against civilians in Sudan continues to escalate. Recently, the United Nations Human Rights Chief confirmed more than 1,000 Sudanese civilians were murdered by the Rapid Support Force’s (RSF) drone attacks since the start of 2026. These attacks continued due to arms supply and external actors’ interference in fueling cries in Sudan and the international community’s failure to hold enablers accountable. It is of the utmost importance that we continue to sound the alarms on the continued involvement of malicious international actors such as the UAE and their seemingly persistent support for the genocide being carried out by the RSF. This genocidal war has escalated at a staggering rate, yet any serious steps to halt it have remained absent from the United Nations agenda. For over three years, the women, children, and civilians of Sudan, especially the regions of Darfur and Kordofan, have faced unrelenting suffering, death and destruction. Both warring parties have committed violations- most notably the RSF- have conducted deliberate campaigns of extermination, displacement, starvation, detention, and sexual violence, with women and children facing the most adverse effects of the attacks. 

It’s worth noting that perpetrators are strategically targeting civilian infrastructure- including hospitals, markets, displacement camps, and schools. Sudan is now at the centre of the world’s largest displacement crisis as more than 9.3 million people are internally displaced and 4.4 million refugees have fled persecution and are living in critical conditions. Nearly 40 million individuals require humanitarian assistance as agricultural sites and humanitarian aid operations are targeted and destroyed. Most areas of Darfur and Kordofan have remained under RSF control, where humanitarian aid is severely restricted or not allowed to enter. The international community can no longer just use words to condemn the atrocities happening on the ground in Darfur and Kordofan. There has been no resolution or end insight for the victims of this genocide as the leaders of the international community discuss Sudan at a distance. Every day, civilian protection is denied, and every week that another ceasefire is broken—another mass grave is dug, another child starves, and another community disappears without a witness left to tell the story.

Drone Warfare is being Used to Carry Out Genocide

On June 15th, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, confirmed that drone strikes conducted by the RSF have killed more than 1,000 civilians in Sudan since the start of the new year. Armed drones are now the leading cause of civilian deaths in the conflict. Both the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have weaponised drone warfare for violent agendas, but with illicit foreign aid, the RSF’s aerial campaign has targeted civilian infrastructure directly. Furthermore, the UN documented that between the period of January to April, drone strikes accounted for at least 880 civilian deaths, thus accounting for nearly 80% of all conflict-related fatalities for the period. In late May and early June alone, RSF strikes left more than 50 civilians dead in the regions of Darfur and Kordofan. The proliferation of drone activity across Sudan has been a devastating and largely unaccountable form of conducting genocide on a mass scale in Sudan. The ability to launch attacks remotely has left perpetrators without risk and civilians increasingly vulnerable. Unlike conventional ground warfare, the RSF’s drone campaigns leave no visible perpetrator, suppress survivor testimony through communication blackouts, and generate almost no legal consequence for the forces deploying them. Across the African continent, where drone technology is increasingly supplied by foreign state actors—including the UAE, Turkey, China, and Iran—these weapons arrive without the oversight mechanisms or rules of engagement that international humanitarian law demands. This indiscriminate use of drones does not protect children in schools or hospitals or any civilian infrastructure– it destroys them. These attacks on civilians are a clear affront to international law and must not be allowed to continue with impunity.

Ceasefire as Political Cover

On June 10th, the warring parties—brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States—agreed to a nationwide ceasefire lasting 24 hours, committing to refrain from attacks, drone use, aerial bombardment, artillery strikes, and the reinforcement of positions. It is extremely outrageous that after three years of persistent attacks on civilians, the international mediation can only secure a ceasefire for 24 hours. A 24-hour pause produces neither protection nor humanitarian access for the millions desperately seeking life-saving help. Rather, it is an offensive insult to the Sudanese, who have lost countless lives – including more than 1,000 of their own killed by drones five months into this year alone – and to every survivor who has buried their dead with their own hands while waiting for the world to act. The people of Sudan have endured a string of broken ceasefire agreements since the start of the conflict in 2023, each one providing the RSF an opportunity to consolidate territorial gains, rearm, and relaunch massacres with renewed force. The RSF has repeatedly demonstrated that halfhearted ceasefire agreements in Sudan have become tactical instruments used to buy time—not evidence of commitment to civilian protection. The international community’s continued reliance on 24-hour pauses and negotiating frameworks does not demonstrate any genuine attempt to stop the genocide. It reflects a catastrophic failure of political will and a profound moral abdication by the world’s most powerful governments and institutions. We must rally behind actors and institutions that are willing to fulfil their moral and legal obligation and demonstrate political will to act with unwavering compassion to ensure that serious international crimes such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity must not go unpunished. The international community must further take measures to ensure the victims and survivors have the rights to protection, justice and restoration of dignity in Sudan.

Famine is Spreading to New Communities

This week, two new areas of North Darfur—Um Baru and Kernoi—exceeded famine thresholds, joining El Fasher and Kadugli, South Kordofan, where famine was already confirmed as of September 2025. Across Sudan, 33.7 million people—nearly two out of every three Sudanese—require humanitarian assistance, which far exceeds other humanitarian causes. Over 4.2 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished, and 800,000 of those children face severe acute malnutrition, threatening their immediate survival. With the ‘lean season’ now underway and the June planting window closing, the trajectory is not toward stabilisation but rather preemptive collapse.

Conclusively, this famine is a dismaying man-made crisis, not the consequence of natural disaster. The RSF has systematically destroyed food markets, incinerated aid convoys, blockaded humanitarian corridors, and expelled relief workers from territory under its control. The 2026 humanitarian response plan for Sudan requires $2.9 billion and has received only 5.5 percent of required funding. The women and children of Um Baru and Kernoi are not dying because the world lacks resources—they are dying because the international community has chosen not to deploy them. Starvation as a weapon of war is a serious crime punishable under international humanitarian law, and those who enable it—through arms supply, diplomatic legitimisation, or willful inaction—share responsibility for every child starving in Sudan.
 

Survivors are Searching for Justice Where the International Community has Failed

On June 9th, twelve Sudanese victims and witnesses filed the first criminal complaint against RSF members outside Sudan. The submission was a landmark confidential complaint to Kenya’s Director of Public Prosecutions, and it named ten identified RSF fighters for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in and around Khartoum since the start of the war. The charges include murder, unlawful detention, torture, rape, sexual slavery, persecution, and deliberate attacks against civilians. This act of courage must be commemorated and respected, but it also speaks to the international community’s and the United Nations greater lack of action and failure to deliver justice to the people of Sudan. 

This demonstrates the Sudanese victims’ commitment to the rule of law, even if their national institutions fail to bring justice. Victims have cried for justice for years on end, only to see justice delayed, including the International Criminal Court, as the UN Security Council remains paralysed and has failed to support the swift approach to accountability in Sudan. Consequently, Sudan’s own judicial system, despite being weak, has been dismantled by the very forces committing these crimes— This recent filing by the victims demonstrates that the Sudanese victims are committed to fighting for justice even in the face of falling international institutions. The UN Fact-Finding Mission confirmed in February 2026 that RSF actions in El Fasher bear the ‘hallmarks of genocide’ and that at least three underlying acts of genocide were committed: killing members of a protected ethnic group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction. It was further concluded that the risk of genocidal acts remains ‘serious and ongoing.’ Thousands of civilians, women, and children remain detained in RSF facilities across El Fasher, enduring torture, rape, and enforced disappearance. While the UN fact-finding mission (FFM) remains ongoing, more effort must be made to reach victims trapped inside Sudan to ensure proper documentation of all crimes so that perpetrators will see their day in court. This FFM investigation report is critical to the ability to hold perpetrators accountable and deliver adequate justice– the international community and its leaders must remain steadfast in this mission. 
 

DWAG Demands Serious Action

Darfur Women Action Group refuses to remain silent about the genocide unfolding in Darfur, Kordofan, and other vulnerable regions of Sudan. We are dismayed and agonized by international institutions’ constant failure and our leaders’ indifference to the people of Sudan. In the face of some of the deadliest and most documented atrocities in modern history, we must not allow world leaders to normalize genocide or reduce Sudan’s suffering to a matter diplomacy or politics. 24-hour ceasefire negotiations, and ‘truce frameworks’ not only deepen civilian suffering but enable and embolden perpetrators to kill more people with impunity. Moreover,  the UN Security Council– despite countless resolutions and emergency meetings on Sudan– has utterly failed to enforce its own resolutions. The European Union’s acts of political condemnation imposed targeted sanctions on seven individuals in January 2026. This ‘gesture’ has not prevented a single drone attack, freed a single detainee, or delivered sufficient aid convoys to famine-stricken regions. 

Every day, we witness heartbreaking testimonies of survivors who continue to plead for protection even in a world that has stopped listening. Sudan’s people have screamed, documented, escaped, testified, and seen their homes destroyed and villages being burned to the ground. They have now carried their testimony to foreign courts because their own courts are occupied by their persecutors. It is quite clear that the crises in Sudan continue not due to a lack of evidence, but a lack of political will that has prevented an effective response. Three years into this genocide, it’s high time that the international community moves to replace its rhetoric with actions to meet its legal and moral obligations in Sudan. We must speak up and remind our leaders that in the face of genocide observation, negotiation and neutrality are complicity and abandonment.

We call on the United Nations Security Council, the African Union, the United States, the European Union, IGAD, and all international stakeholders to take the following urgent measures:

• Enforce an Immediate and Sustained Ceasefire with Civilian Protection Guarantees, including an immediate halt to all aerial bombardment, drone strikes, and siege tactics, and mandate the withdrawal of armed forces from civilian zones across Darfur and Kordofan. Only a verified, monitored, and enforced cessation of hostilities can stop the killing.
• Open Safe Humanitarian Corridors by Land and Air with guaranteed access for food, medical aid, fuel, and emergency response teams—including cross-border corridors through Chad—without interference or blockade by armed groups. Um Baru and Kernoi cannot wait.
• Deploy International Protection Forces under Chapter VII mandates to safeguard civilians, displacement camps, hospitals, and aid workers across Darfur and Kordofan immediately.
• Expand the Arms Embargo to All of Sudan by cutting the weapons pipeline feeding this genocide, including enforcement against all international suppliers and intermediaries known to be arming the RSF.
• Fully Resource and Protect the UN Fact-Finding Mission and the ICC to document atrocities, secure evidence of mass graves, and prosecute crimes of genocide, sexual violence, ethnic targeting, and mass starvation as weapons of war. The Kenya complaint must be supported and replicated globally.
• Impose Comprehensive Targeted Sanctions, travel bans, and international criminal designation against RSF leadership and all states and private entities supplying arms, financing, or providing diplomatic cover for the RSF’s genocidal campaign.
• Join America’s Calls in Designating the RSF as a Global Terrorist Organization and build a coordinated international response to delegitimise, isolate, and financially dismantle its leadership.
• Listen to and Meaningfully Integrate the Voices of Survivors, Women, and Affected Communities in all decision-making processes related to resolving the crisis, delivering accountability, and preventing future atrocities. Sudan’s women have survived genocide and carried its evidence to foreign courts; they must be at every table where its future is decided.

The people of Darfur, Kordofan, and all of Sudan deserve the full protection of international law immediately. Three years of death, destruction and ethnically motivated atrocities must be treated with a sense of urgency and serious actions.  Ending genocide must not be an easy task, but one thousand drone deaths later, the international community is out of time to deliberate.

We implore all of you to add your voice, mobilise global action and compel our leaders to use all tools at their disposal to stop genocide, protect survivors, and ensure justice for the victims and accountability for perpetrators must be a priority policy agenda for all international and regional actors. Join our One Million Voices for Sudan Campaign. 

If we can collectively speak in one voice and hold our leaders and international institutions accountable, we can make a difference, end the suffering, save lives, and hold the perpetrators accountable. Together, we must defend human dignity, demand protection to end the current genocide and prevent future genocide in Sudan or elsewhere in the world. 

 
Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Niemat Ahmadi

Founder and President, Darfur Women Action Group

For inquiries, please contact: policy@darfurwomenaction.org

For more resources and to find ways in which you can help, go to: www.darfurwomenaction.org

About DWAG

Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG) is a women-led anti-atrocities nonprofit with a 501(c)(3) status, founded in 2009 by a Darfur genocide survivor to empower and amplify voices of women and the conflict-affected and historically excluded communities in Sudan and the United States of America (USA) to enable them to champion their causes and work collectively to foster sustainable social change.