00:00The U.N. human rights chief has warned worse is to come in Sudan unless the international
00:15community intervenes to halt the bloodshed. Volker Turk said fatal drone strikes on civilians
00:21were continuing, committed by both the Sudanese army and paramilitary rapid support forces.
00:27Greater Kordofan, a region comprising three states, has emerged as the latest front line
00:32in Sudan's nearly three-year conflict. Fighting has intensified there since the capture of
00:37El Fashir in the neighbouring Darfur region.
00:43Sudan's Kordofan region has not been immune to drone strikes during the country's nearly
00:47three-year civil war. But a new wave of fatal attacks is stirring, mounting concerns.
00:54The U.N. has warned both the Sudanese army and the rapid support forces have used advanced
00:59drone weaponry during the last two weeks. And that civilians in the region are at increasing
01:04risk of suffering the same intensity of human rights abuses that were committed in El Fashir.
01:10Fighting there has intensified since the capture of El Fashir. Drone strikes by both sides continue,
01:17resulting in dozens of civilian deaths and injuries. Civilians are at risk of summary executions,
01:24sexual violence, arbitrary detention and family separation.
01:28The U.N. human rights chief also said he had visited El Fashir since last October, when the
01:33rapid support forces unleashed a wave of deadly violence. He said first-hand accounts described
01:40mass killings, summary executions, rapes, sexual violence and torture, and were consistent with
01:47the International Criminal Court's assessment that both war crimes and crimes against humanity took place.
01:53We heard convincing testimony that some victims were targeted based on their non-Arab ethnicity,
02:01in particular members of the Sargawa ethnic group. Survivors also spoke of seeing piles of dead bodies
02:09along roads leading away from El Fashir in an apocalyptic scene that one person likened to the Day of Judgment.
02:18The situation in Sudan has been described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis,
02:23with thousands of people killed and more than 12 million people forced from their homes since the
02:29conflict began in April 2023. However, the U.N. chief warned, worse is yet to come,
02:37unless the international community takes decisive steps to stop the fighting.
02:41Well, we're going to speak more about this story now. We can bring in Renaud Doucy, who's a field
02:49coordinator for Solidarité Internationale in Tawila in Sudan. Thank you very much for speaking to us on
02:55France 24. I want to start by talking about the situation where you are in North Darfur. We've heard
03:01then from the U.N. human rights chief. He relayed testimonies of atrocities committed against civilians.
03:07What kinds of things are you hearing from people there?
03:18I just discovered on your channel the declaration on Mr. Volker Turk. I'm pretty shocked.
03:27Everybody knew what would happen in El Fashir. Everybody. Everybody knew what was happening at that
03:35time, 500 days of siege, and everybody knew how it would end. So this declaration two or three months
03:45after the fall of El Fashir is like, to be honest, ridiculous. I'm sorry, the international community
03:53didn't do anything for all these civilian people trapped into a war, which is cruel, which is against
04:03civilian people. So it's hard to believe what I heard, to be honest, I'm sorry to say. I am currently
04:10in what we call a hard-to-reach area around El Fashir. This is hard to reach now, but it was impossible to
04:17reach. And behind me, there is thousands of graves, thousands of bodies under the sun, thousands of people
04:25who have been killed while they were escaping El Fashir in the last months of September and October. Since April,
04:36with the fall of Zamzam since April 2025, more than 800,000 people took refuge in Tawila, in the SLA area,
04:49which is a natural group. Some NGOs, among them Médecins Sans Frontières, NRC or Solidarité Internationale,
04:58tried as much as possible to support them and to help them to face this situation after the worst
05:06things that they had to endure and to see. Rage tips in the large scale, systematic looting,
05:19to all types of us. The national community talks about El Fashir, talks about Tawila. It's too late.
05:25So let's try now together to reach the last survivors of El Fashir who are disseminated
05:32all around El Fashir, and let's try to support them as we do and as we have been doing since
05:37April in Tawila. Right. I hear your frustration there because, of course, you've been there
05:43on the front lines with the civilians trying to provide aid. What is your biggest priority now
05:49in order to help these civilians? Now it's to fill the gaps in the needs that we can cover in Tawila.
05:58There is almost one million people, mostly women and children, stuck in Tawila. They don't have any
06:07hope to return back to El Fashir or around. So, for example, we are a wash actor, meaning water and
06:18sanitation specialist actor. And we can only, on the field, we can cover less than 30% of water,
06:26for example, 40% of them in terms of latrine. What does it mean? It means that people just drink
06:31two or three liters per day. So it's just about surviving one year after they fled Zamzam or El Fashir.
06:39And then the second priority is to also on the area outside of El Fashir, outside of Tawila,
06:46sorry, Tawila, attracts all the displaced people of Central and North Darfur, because there is,
06:57there are NGOs there. Even if we don't cover the needs, we are here. And now it's the NGOs and the UN and
07:05especially OCHA, the humanitarian agencies of the United Nations, to go with surrounded
07:18for local access. It's long. We have to face many groups, militias, RSF, and we have to negotiate the
07:27access to them and to bring protection to civilians and humanitarian services as food, water and
07:35shelters. And how do you work with local authorities on the ground to bring civilians this humanitarian aid?
07:47It's a daily job, 24-7, meaning that we are talking to everybody.
07:52We are looking for the good contacts to have more information. And we go on the field, once we have
07:59the green lights, that we know that we can meet the traditional leaders, Shir, Ombaz and Shirtai,
08:08the RSF leaders, commanders and so on, the humanities of RSF, the governmental authorities,
08:16which are slowly but surely setting up in North Darfur. And because we are in the SLA area, which is a,
08:28which remains neutral in this war in Sudan, we have also to negotiate with them to pass from their area to
08:34the newly RSF area. So it's not easy. We have to talk with everybody. And, but it's the,
08:44it's the way we have access to people and it's the way that people will have access to humanitarian
08:49services.
08:49And the UN is now a warning that we could see more grave abuses in the Kordofan regions. Have you
08:55already seen waves of displacement coming from these areas?
08:59Yeah, in Kordofan, you have multiple displacement, multiple dynamics also,
09:10between the, the, the, the West Kordofan, the North Kordofan, the South Kordofan, you have many groups,
09:17you have allies of RSF who are becoming allies of South and so on. So civilians are stuck. They try to go
09:25on the West, meaning in East Darfur, they try to go in the direction of Khartoum, for example,
09:33or in the North, or even in the North Darfur. So you have multiple dynamics. It's pretty,
09:41it's not clear for the moment, to be honest. Solidarity, for example, we will open a base
09:48soon at the limit of Kordofan between East Darfur and Kordofan, but yeah, that's, you know, it's,
09:55it's little step by little step. But one, one thing is sure is that what, what, what happened in
10:02the North Darfur during 500 days of siege in El Fasher is happening now in Kordofan. So
10:12for Zena, probably we didn't know what would happen. For El Fasher, we knew, everybody knew,
10:19and we know exactly what happened. And now in Kordofan, we, we,
10:25after what will happen.
10:29Renaud Doucy, thank you very much for being with us on France 24. We are having some slight
10:35connection problems, but it's been very good to speak to and to shine a light on the humanitarian
10:40situation in Hudan.
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