Summary

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan (“the Mission”) assesses that the mass killings and related atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces in and around El-Fasher, during its takeover of the city on or around 26 and 27 October 2025, are indicators of a genocidal path. These crimes followed an 18-month siege during which the Rapid Support Forces deliberately imposed conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of non-Arab communities, in particular the Zaghawa and the Fur.

The Mission documented an escalating pattern that demonstrates coordination, targeting and repetition of identity-based targeting linked to ethnicity, gender, and perceived political affiliation, resulting in mass killings, serious bodily and mental harm, widespread rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary detention, torture and cruel treatment, and enforced disappearances, accompanied by dehumanising and exterminatory rhetoric. This cumulative factual matrix reveals the intent of the Rapid Support Forces to destroy the Zaghawa and Fur communities in whole or in part. The conduct in El-Fasher is an aggravation of earlier patterns of mirror attacks against other non-Arab communities elsewhere in Sudan, but on a far more lethal scale. Accountability of perpetrators, including those who facilitate, aid or abet these crimes, remains imperative. As the conflict expands to other regions, urgent protection for civilians is needed more than ever.