ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan KC appeals for information on international crimes in Darfur, Sudan

THE International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Mr Karim Khan KC issued an urgent appeal today (Tuesday, 11 June 2024) in The Hague for information and evidence of atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, saying his ongoing investigation “seems to disclose an organised, systematic and a profound attack on human dignity.” Mr Khan called on international organisations, partners and national authorities to collect evidence and information and hand it over to him. View the appeal on video and two reports here below. 

Provide evidence and information to the ICC here: https://otplink.icc-cpi.int

Note, Subtitles for this video can be viewed in different languages: click on above video, click on wheel "Settings", click on "Subtitles", click on "Auto translate", scroll "list of languages", click on language, desired Subtitles will appear at bottom of video. Size of font for Subtitles can be adjusted: click on wheel "Settings", click on "Subtitles", click on "Options" in top right corner. Playback speed for audio and Subtitles can be adjusted: click on wheel "Settings", click on "Playback speed", select speed.

Also, follow along using a Transcript here: https://youtu.be/2D2DYptFW8st

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Report from The Washington Post

By MIKE CORDER, AP (The Associated Press)

Dated Tuesday, 11 June 2024 5:08 am EDT. Here is a full copy:

ICC prosecutor appeals for evidence of atrocities in Sudan after rebels attack hospital in Darfur

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor is appealing for information and evidence of atrocities in Sudan’s western Darfur region

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor appealed Tuesday for information and evidence of atrocities in Sudan, saying his ongoing investigation “seems to disclose an organized, systematic and a profound attack on human dignity.”

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan released a video statement in the aftermath of an attack Sunday by the notorious Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group that forced the closure of a main hospital in the western Darfur region. The group fired shots and looted the hospital in al-Fasher, aid group Doctors Without Borders reported.

The attack came as the RSF, which has been fighting the Sudanese army for a year, intensified its offensive seeking to wrest control of the city, the military’s last stronghold in the sprawling Darfur region. Two weeks of fighting last month in and around al-Fasher has killed more than 120 people.

“The terrible events in West Darfur, including El-Geneina, in 2023 are among our key investigative priorities,” Khan said. “In addition, I am extremely concerned about allegations of widespread international crimes being committed in al-Fasher and its surrounding areas as I speak.”

A long-running conflict

Sudan’s conflict began in April last year when soaring tensions between the leaders of the military and the RSF erupted into fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country.

The war has killed more than 14,000 people and wounded thousands more, while pushing its population to the brink of famine. The U.N. food agency warned the warring parties last month that there is a serious risk of widespread starvation and death in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan if they don’t allow humanitarian aid into the region.

The war also created the world’s largest displacement crisis as more than 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes, including over 2 million people who crossed into neighboring countries, the U.N. migration agency told The Associated Press Monday.

Khan said he is urgently investigating in Sudan.

“The evidence my office has collected to date seems to show credible, repeated, expanding, continuous allegations of attacks against the civilian population, in particular, attacks directed against camps for internally displaced persons,” he said.

“It seems to show the widespread, prevalent use of rape and other forms of sexual violence. It seems to disclose consistently the shelling of civilian areas, the looting of properties and attacks against hospitals,” he added, stressing that he was “particularly concerned by the ethnically motivated nature of these attacks against the Masalit and other communities.”

The ICC already has an ongoing investigation in Sudan

The ICC has long been investigating atrocities in Sudan, dating back to a previous devastating conflict in Darfur. The court has issued arrest warrants for former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges including genocide allegedly committed in Darfur between 2003-2008.

The RSF was born out of Arab militias, commonly known as Janjaweed, mobilized by al-Bashir against non-Arab tribes in Darfur. At the time, they were accused of mass killings, rapes and other atrocities, and Darfur became synonymous with genocide.

Khan referred back to the previous conflict in his message Tuesday.

“It is an outrage that we are allowing history to repeat itself once again in Darfur,” he said. “We cannot and we must not allow Darfur to become the world’s forgotten atrocity, once again.”

Photo [not shown here] caption: FILE - Sudanese soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces unit, led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy head of the military council, secure the area where Dagalo attends a military-backed tribe’s rally, in the East Nile province, Sudan, on June 22, 2019. The RSF, attacked the South Hospital in al-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur province on Sunday, June 9, 2024 opening fire on medical staff and patients, Doctors Without Borders said in a statement. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

View original: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/11/sudan-icc-investigation-khan-rsf-darfur/2e3324a8-27d2-11ef-835a-2a6acac1f8a6_story.html

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Further Reading

From International Organisation for Migration (IOM) 11 June 2024:

DTM Sudan Mobility Update (02). IOM, Sudan

This report provides an overview of the total population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan, including those displaced both before and after the onset of conflict on 15 April 2023.  

See full report here: https://dtm.iom.int/reports/sudan-mobility-update-02

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UPDATE by Sudan Watch Editor 

On Wednesday, 12 June 2024 at 15:26 GMT:

The above video can be viewed at X in post by ICC 8:45AM June 11, 2024.

#ICC Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC announces campaign calling for information and cooperation in relation to allegations of international crimes being committed in #Darfur, Sudan, including in Al Fasher.

Info can be sent to #OTPLink:https://t.co/IYVUCvyWCA

Watch 👇 pic.twitter.com/H1sMPGB8jP

— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) June 11, 2024

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Sudan & South Sudan: Adama Dieng appointed as first African Union (AU) special envoy for the prevention of the crime of genocide and other mass atrocities

Report from Human Rights Watch
Dated Tuesday, 23 April 2024 7:15AM EDT - here is a copy in full:

Can New African Union Genocide Envoy Curb Atrocities in Africa?

Adama Dieng has Mandate to ‘Combat the Ideology of Hate’

Click to expand Image

Adama Dieng, then-UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, New York, June 2019. © 2019 Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Adama Dieng has been appointed as the first African Union (AU) special envoy for the prevention of the crime of genocide and other mass atrocities.

Dieng will drive the organization’s agenda to “combat the ideology of hate and genocide on the continent,” said AU Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat. The April 6 appointment could not be more symbolic, marking 30 years since the Rwandan genocide and harkening to the failure of the international community to stop the slaughter.

Dieng has occupied several positions within the United Nations human rights and justice system, including as a registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), then as UN designated expert on the situation of human rights in Sudan. From 2012 to 2020, he was UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, with a mandate to raise the alarm over situations likely to spiral into genocide and mobilize UN security council action to prevent such atrocities.

Dieng’s new appointment comes at a time when Africa is witnessing spates of terrible mass atrocities and serious crimes, with dire humanitarian consequences, and little to no international attention.

April 15 marked the first anniversary of the fast-deteriorating conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). While both parties have committed egregious laws of war violations, the targeted attacks on ethnic non-Arab communities in West Darfur by the RSF and allied militias have evoked the spectre of the horrific Darfur war. That conflict killed 300,000 people in the early 2000s and led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict then-Sudan President Omar al-Bashir.

Government forces in Burkina Faso have carried out mass killings of civilians as part of a brutal campaign to tackle Islamist armed groups, who have also committed serious abuses. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, government forces and armed groups, including the Rwanda-backed M23, have committed atrocities against civilians in violence throughout North Kivu and Ituri provinces.

Atrocities and serious crimes are nevertheless not limited to war time, as illustrated by the October 30, 2022 crackdown on protestors in Chad, when scores of protesters were shot by security forces.

Dieng’s newly created regional mandate could be a timely boost to existing international mechanisms on atrocities prevention if it proves to be an indication of more genuine AU political willingness to end mass abuse and uphold accountability standards.

View original:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/23/can-new-african-union-genocide-envoy-curb-atrocities-africa

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Darfur War Child raised in Abu Shouk IDP camp: Abdoalnaser Ibrahim, Businessman (Boy) by 11!

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: I received an astonishing email last Monday from a stranger, Mr Abdoalnaser Ibrahim in Canada. Here is a copy, reprinted in full with permission, followed by my reply and Abdoalnaser's story of his childhood in Abu Shouk IDP camp, North Darfur circa 2004.

Email from Abdoalnaser Ibrahim 

Dated Monday, 11 March 2024

Photo: Abdoalnaser Ibrahim, Aspiring Data Analyst | Certified in Data Analytics | Petroleum Engineer

I am a survivor of the 2003 Darfur genocide, spent most of my life in Abushock IDP camp - my Mom wnated for us to get educated and have better life after my father's passing away in the war - I worked hard both in education and in supporting my family. In 2013 I was amongst Sudanese top students and joined University of Khartoum and studied engineering and been volunteering since for the cause of no other child should live what I have been through.

In 2022 I joined UN Youth Delegate program sponsored by Germany for Sudanese youth and attended the UN General Assembly of Sep 2022.

After that I came to Canada, applied for asylum and currently living in a refugees shelter - all excited to enjoy my new life, support family, contribute to Darfur betterment as well as inspire youth around the world in IDP camps and Refugee camps.

Going through your profile was such a delight as you were one of those who have worked hard so that kids like me and all war victims (I was 7 at 2003) can have a better life, heal from what they have lived and get justice.

Also, I witnessed the visit of Koffi Annan, Colin Powell, condoleezza rice and the accompanying delegates to our IDP camps.

Thank you from my bottom of heart for the good that you did to us 🙏

Please let me know if by any chance you would be available for a quick virtual meeting - I would love to know you, the work you did and still doing.

Stay safe and sound !

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HERE is a copy of my reply to Abdoalnaser, sent a few days later:

Dear Abdoalnaser, 

Greetings from England UK and thank you for connecting and for your wonderful messages, gratefully received and much appreciated. 

Your news and words brought me to tears. Over the years, I've often wondered what became of all the babies, children and youngsters in Darfur from 2003-4 onwards. Now through the wonders of the internet I have, for the first time in 20 years, heard from one of those children with some feedback. 

You write beautifully with interest, warmth and humour. Your English is very good. I liked your story (boy to man) and wanted to ask you for your permission to publish it and its photos at Sudan Watch. 

Your story is a truly inspiring. What strikes me about your writings and that of some of the Lost Boys [and Girls] of (South) Sudan - some of whom became child soldiers - is that your extraordinary experiences, hard work, resilience, tenacity and persistence have made you incredibly strong clever people with charming manners and personalities. 

I must stop now or another day will pass without you receiving my gratitude and thanks from the bottom of my heart. 

I'm thrilled you got through it all. 

Extremely well done, I look forward to keeping in touch. 

Warm regards, 

Ingrid.

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THIS is Abdoalnaser's story of his childhood living in Abu Shouk camp, North Darfur, one of the largest camps for internally displaced persons in Sudan, written in his own words.

Businessman (Boy) by 11!

By Abdoalnaser Ibrahim

Dated February 14, 2024

Story about a business idea in my childhood and a message to internally displace persons and refugees around the world

Photo: Myself after a hectic business day in 2010 taking a photograph for high school application.

Post Darfur 2003 conflict at which I lost my father, and after which me, the rest of my family and many others were forced by war to leave our homes and settle into IDP camps — all have lost loved ones and property, I was 7 years old by then. The situation in our IDP camp was very challenging — but luckily humanitarian organizations generously provided us with the needed aids to survive.

That situation tasked me in a very early age with big questions about life and the future, by the age of 10 years old — I asked my mother to allow me work and share with her the financial responsibilities she was desperately trying to meet – selling her valuables and doing tough labor, she agreed after negotiations — with the condition of not defaulting on my education.

I started working as a plastic containers distributor by carrying a big package on my shoulders containing many of them, going to shops across Abushock and Abuja IDP camps block by block — and asking them if they wanted some. But the tremendous effort exerted in distributing / selling never corresponded with the income gained — average of 3 SDGs (SDG: Sudanese Pounds / currency, I SDG = 3.34USD back then) per day at best with scanning the whole two camps walking, after doing that for a year -I started thinking about alternative ways to do a business that rewards better and pays off, that is when I got into Amir Alpha product selling (a glue- adhesive for many surface materials).

Image: Amir Alpha product carton.

The inspiration stemmed from the fact that shop owners in the two camps when bringing products for final selling, they usually go to a specific side of the market (Food and utilities), but the Amir Alpha product was in another side of the market, so after shop owners are loaded with lots of goods from the first side, it becomes harder for them to go to the other side with the amount of goods they bought, and for just one product, but they often do not even remember it. The reliability of a shop owner in Sudan is in part influenced by whether they have all necessities available for customer buyers, that keep customers returning to same shop — so many shop owners ask me a lot about whether I have it or can provide it — for they get asked about the Amir Alpha product a lot by many loyal customers wanting to fix their broken items, I also asked many others whether they have it and would buy if I were to provide it — and a sizable number of them responded positively.

That is when I got a penalty at the 90th minute, and charged myself with providing it for the shop owners, I would buy a carton and divide the Amir Alpha products inside into dozens a pack, a carton like the one attached above in green makes 21 dozens — the whole carton cost around 30 SDGs back then and I would sell a dozen pack for 2.5 SDGs — making around 22.5 SDGs pure profit, and I am the boss of myself — so with this amount of income I turned into only working on weekends to focus on school — and would use half of it and contribute the rest to family welfare, as time goes by — I have scaled up my business and continued profiting until other competitors appeared in the market, but by then I have already built personal connections with my customers and gained their loyalty.

That window of freedom to work in early childhood taught me valuable life lessons and skilled me in many areas of life, which shaped my resilience and creativity of today.

Back then — I would just look at a shop owner and know whether they were going to buy or not, and was resilient enough to rarely skip a prospect buyer in my scanning of the two camp shops.

So this is a message to all struggling youths around the world including those in refugee and IDP camps, experiencing sheer poverty, balancing education and labor — maybe you were not born into the right context you wish have happened, your thinking power, resourcefulness, and grit are priceless if projected and replicated into businesses, tech, and many other walks of life — your minds are capable as much as MIT and Harvard graduates, if not more - provided with an opportunity to grow, be restless in seeking opportunities and learning new tools to gain more flexibility and ease carrying out your day to day affairs, 

(For example; just today as I was applying to a range of jobs - I discovered a setting in windows that enables you to access any item you have copied before, it indeed increased my productivity afterwards).

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UK is sending Darfur Sudan war crimes evidence to UN Security Council, UN Human Rights Council & ICC

UK is penholder on Sudan file at UN Security Council. The ICC launched a new investigation into alleged war crimes in Sudan in July with ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan saying “we are in the midst of a human catastrophe”.

Read more in a report at the Guardian

By Patrick Wintour Diplomatic Editor
Dated Tue 22 Aug 2023 17.25 BST; Last modified 17.59 BST - full copy:

War crimes being committed in Darfur, says UK minister Andrew Mitchell

Africa minister says civilian death toll horrific and UK is to send evidence to UN

Sudanese people fleeing the conflict in Darfur cross the border between Sudan and Chad in Adre. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

War crimes and atrocities against civilians are being committed in Darfur, western Sudan, the UK’s Africa minister Andrew Mitchell said on Tuesday, becoming one of the first western officials to identify that the fighting in Sudan has developed into more than a power struggle between two rival factions.

Mitchell said there was growing evidence of serious atrocities being committed, describing the civilian death toll as horrific in a statement released by the Foreign Office. “Reports of deliberate targeting and mass displacement of the Masalit community in Darfur are particularly shocking and abhorrent. Intentional directing of attacks at the civilian population is a war crime.”

He added the UK would do all it could to assemble credible evidence to present to the UN security council, the UN Human Rights Council and the international criminal court.

There had been an expectation that the US would have explicitly joined the UK in making a formal atrocity determination, but so far the State Department has held off, partly because the US does not want to jeopardise talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, designed to end the civil war between Sudanese Armed Forces and the independent Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Observers claim the larger power struggle that broke out in April, with fighting in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has provided cover for RSF allied forces to undertake ethnic cleansing in west Darfur, reviving memories of the genocide committed in Darfur 20 years ago.

The attacks on the Masalit and other ethnic communities are led by the Janjaweed militias allied with the RSF. The RSF is commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

More than 300,000 Sudanese nationals have crossed the border into neighbouring Chad since the conflict broke out, according to the UN’s migratory agency.

Africa minister Andrew Mitchell is one of the first western officials to identify that the fighting in Sudan is more than a struggle between two factions. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Kate Ferguson, co-executive director of the human rights NGO Protection Approaches, welcomed Mitchell’s statement saying: “He is absolutely right to condemn not only the armed conflict between the SAF and RSF which is devastating Sudan but also to highlight the deliberate targeting and mass displacement of non-Arab communities in Darfur.

“These two related but distinct trajectories of violence require related but distinct solutions; this reality must be a cornerstone for the UK government and the entire international system in the pursuit of peace in Sudan.

The Saudi peace talks rely on progress being made between different bad faith actors over which Riyadh seems to have little leverage. Others say the true external players in Sudan are Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which are closely linked to the SAF and RSF respectively.

The ICC launched a new investigation into alleged war crimes in Sudan in July with ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan saying “we are in the midst of a human catastrophe”.

The UK has imposed sanctions on businesses linked to the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces in an effort to register its disapproval.

View original: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/war-crimes-being-committed-in-darfur-says-uk-minister-andrew-mitchell

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