UN Rights Council Orders Urgent Inquiry into Sudan’s Al Obeid

The United Nations Human Rights Council has approved an urgent inquiry into alleged human rights violations in Sudan’s city of Al Obeid, citing growing fears of large scale atrocities as fighting intensifies between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The resolution, adopted during an emergency session in Geneva, strongly condemned the escalating violence and instructed the UN’s Independent International Fact Finding Mission on Sudan to investigate alleged abuses and violations of international humanitarian law committed in and around Al Obeid.

The United Kingdom, which led the initiative, warned that the situation in Al Obeid risks repeating the mass atrocities witnessed in Al Fashir last year. Britain’s Human Rights Ambassador, Eleanor Sanders, urged swift international action, saying, “These horrors must not be repeated.”

The move follows repeated warnings from UN human rights officials that hundreds of thousands of civilians in and around Al Obeid face an imminent threat as the conflict deepens and humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate.