Western governments have put elite bargains before civilian lives. If El Fasher is to mean anything, this approach must change

The latest report from the UN independent fact-finding mission on the fall of El Fasher in Sudan reads like a postmortem of a preventable tragedy. The report details what it calls the “hallmarks of genocide”: mass killings, systematic sexual violence and ethnic cleansing targeting non-Arab communities by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The atrocities in El Fasher should have surprised no one in the international community. Western governments were warned repeatedly by civil society, humanitarian organisations, investigative journalists and their own agencies. In Britain, a whistleblower last year accused the Foreign Office of censoring internal warnings about imminent genocide. The US state department and members of the UN security council received continuous reporting from the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab documenting the RSF’s military buildup and preparations to overrun the city. Senior US officials warned the Biden administration that El Fasher was at imminent risk. A security council resolution in 2024 called for an end to the siege. None of this prevented the city from being strangled.

Husam Mahjoub is co-founder of Sudan Bukra, an independent non-profit Sudanese TV channel

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