Geneva, Dec. 19, 2025 – A United Nations investigation has laid bare a campaign of systematic violence of staggering brutality in Sudan, attributing the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians in just 72 hours to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The report, published by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), details a premeditated offensive on the Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) near El Fasher, North Darfur, between April 11 and 13, 2025—an event that marks one of the single most lethal episodes in a conflict the UN now calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
The OHCHR’s findings go far beyond a simple death toll. The agency documented “the killing of at least 1,013 civilians in the context of the RSF offensive,” a figure that underscores the targeted nature of the violence against a defenseless population. This was not collateral damage; the report describes “a consistent pattern of serious violations of international humanitarian law and gross abuses of international human rights law,” including widespread killings, rapes and sexual violence, torture, and abductions.
Critically, the UN report reveals that the April massacre was the culmination of a deliberate strategy of siege and starvation. In the months leading up to the assault, the RSF methodically blocked the import of food, water, fuel, and other essential goods into Zamzam—once North Darfur’s largest IDP camp. They attacked those who attempted to bring in supplies, weaponizing hunger to weaken the population. The report’s most harrowing detail speaks to the resulting desperation: to survive, families were forced to feed their children animal feed, such as peanut shells. This context transforms the subsequent attack from a spontaneous military action into what may constitute a crime against humanity, demonstrating intent to destroy a civilian population in part.
The immediate human cost was catastrophic. Beyond the more than 1,000 killed, the three-day offensive forcibly displaced over 400,000 residents of the camp, adding to a staggering national displacement figure of around 12 million people—roughly one in four Sudanese. The conflict, which erupted in April 2023 after the RSF resisted integration into the national army, has plunged the country into a famine-like reality, with every second resident now threatened by acute hunger.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk issued a stark warning that resonates beyond the report’s grim statistics: “The world must not sit back and watch as such cruelty becomes entrenched as the order of the day in Sudan.” His statement highlights a central, troubling paradox of this crisis. Despite creating the largest displacement crisis globally and pushing millions to the brink of starvation, the war in Sudan suffers from a profound “compassion fatigue” in international media and diplomacy, receiving a fraction of the attention devoted to other concurrent conflicts.
The OHCHR report on Zamzam serves as a crucial evidentiary record and a damning indictment. It moves the narrative from vague reports of “clashes” to a specific, documented account of atrocities. It challenges the international community to move beyond mere condemnation to actionable accountability, including through mechanisms like the International Criminal Court, which has previously investigated crimes in Darfur. The massacre at Zamzam is not an isolated incident but a horrific benchmark in a war defined by the abandonment of civilian protection, and a test of whether the global system designed to prevent such horrors still functions.
About Author
