Sudanese see little hope that ICC probe on Darfur will bring justice

The International Criminal Court is building a case against fighters from Sudan's feared Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for committing atrocity crimes in the vast western region of Darfur.

In a video recording released by the court on 19 January, the ICC's deputy prosecutor, Nazmat Shahmeem Khan, said that the court possesses substantial evidence of RSF crimes, based in part on video, satellite, and audio data.

While victims and analysts welcomed Khan's announcement, they have little hope that justice will prevail soon, nor do they expect the court's investigations to deter human rights violators.

"Neither arrest warrants nor the sentencing of perpetrators will stop the war," said Bedour Zakaria, a human rights monitor whose brother was killed by the RSF in West Darfur in 2023.

"External powers will keep arming and supporting the belligerents, irrespective of what the court does," she told The New Arab.

Obstructing justice

Victims and analysts mainly blame the regular army, known as the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), and the RSF for obstructing justice and efforts to end the war.

Both sides have carried out atrocity crimes such as extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances since the former bedfellows turned on each other in a quest to consolidate power in April 2023.

Nomadic "Arab" communities, which make up the bulk of the RSF's recruits, have committed additional atrocities such as systematically subjecting women and girls to sexual violence and carrying out ethnic killings on a genocidal scale, according to local monitors, the UN and global human rights groups.

In Darfur, the RSF has directed the majority of its crimes against mainly sedentary "non-Arab" farming communities, said Nahid Hamid, a human rights lawyer from the non-Arab Masalit tribe that was expelled from their land in West Darfur in July 2023.

"The RSF may be fighting the SAF on some level in central Sudan, but they are solely at war against non-Arabs [civilians] in Darfur," she told TNA.

She added that many victims from Darfur have little faith in the ICC's ability to deliver meaningful justice in due time.

However, other victims say they are more optimistic that they will see some form of justice in their lifetime.

"I'm very optimistic with the step the ICC has taken by making this announcement," said Assad, a victim of the RSF's violence and whose last name is being withheld to protect him from reprisal.

Assad is one of tens of thousands of people from the non-Arab Masalit tribe who were expelled from West Darfur into overcrowded refugee camps in neighbouring Chad.

He told TNA that most people in the camps are hopeful that the ICC can deliver justice, although many are afraid that the RSF could attack the camps to hunt down those perceived to be cooperating with the ICC.

"All of us in the camps are living in a lot of fear of the RSF," he said.

Pressure point

On the same day, the ICC commented on its probe into Darfur, the SAF-backed government urged the court to speed up its work and investigate the United Arab Emirates for providing weapons to the RSF.

The UAE denies arming the RSF, yet UN experts, Amnesty International and other open-source researchers have concluded that the Emirates have shipped high-powered drones, Chinese-made artillery and guided bombs to the group via Chad, Libya and Somalia.

US intelligence officials have reached the same conclusion, while additional media reports found the UAE is hiring Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside the RSF.

As a result, the SAF is trying to use the ICC to pressure the Emirates to stop backing the RSF, according to Kholood Khair, an expert on Sudan and the founder of the Confluence Advisory think-tank.

"SAF doesn't actually believe in the pursuit of justice…but they are trying to score political points," she told TNA.

Khair added that the SAF has still not handed over former autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir nor his former aides to stand trial in the ICC on account of committing war crimes and genocide during the Darfur war in 2003.

What's more, SAF denied entry to a UN fact-finding mission seeking to travel to North Darfur's capital, el-Fasher, in October 2025.

At the time, RSF fighters were filming themselves committing mass atrocities against beleaguered civilians after overpowering SAF defences.

The SAF claimed it denied the UN access to protect its sovereignty, even though the UN recognises the SAF as the sole legitimate institution in the country.

Analysts and human rights monitors believe the SAF feared that the UN fact-finding mission would later request permission to access regions where both belligerents are implicated in human rights violations.

"I just don't see how SAF can put forward a credible image [that it believes in justice]," Khair said.

Aiming high?

Irrespective of SAF’s motives for supporting the ICC's probe in Darfur, victims and survivors from Darfur would like to see high-level RSF leaders face justice.

"Any form of justice will still be a positive step forward," said Zakaria, the human rights monitor from West Darfur.

In the summer of 2023, the RSF killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people in West Darfur's capital of el-Geneiena alone, according to a UN Panel of Experts report.

The ethnic killings led to what many describe as the ethnic cleansing of the non-Arab Masalit tribe.

Two years later, in el-Fasher, the RSF committed numerous summary executions, subjected women and girls to rape as a weapon of war and carried out mass kidnappings for ransom.

In addition, victims from el-Fasher told media outlets that they saw RSF fighters take blood from fleeing civilians in an attempt to build their own makeshift blood banks.

The harrowing crimes followed a brutal 500-day siege, which gradually depleted the population of el-Fasher. Hundreds of thousands of starving and beleaguered civilians risked crossing through RSF checkpoints in order to access water and food in surrounding villages.

Some 250,000 people were still in el-Fasher when the city fell. Of that number, at least 60,000 people remain unaccounted for, according to the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which uses satellite imagery to assess conflict dynamics in Sudan.

Those missing are all feared to be dead.

A source with extensive knowledge of the ICC, but who was not professionally authorised to speak to the press, suspects the court will first issue arrest warrants against individuals implicated in the atrocities in el-Fasher due to the substantial open-source evidence available.

However, the source believes the court will likely go after lower-level commanders as it'll be easier to build a case against them, adding that it is tougher to implicate the RSF's top brass.

"The standard of proof gets higher and higher the more you go up the chain," the source said.