Over 500
Days of Siege
How foreign arms enabled the Rapid Support Forces' campaign of sexual and genocidal violence, and how a city became a killing ground.
A siege measured in days, lives and silenced testimony
Figures documented by Legal Action Worldwide and the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA). Numbers are indicative, not exhaustive: the true scale remains hidden behind communications blackouts, restricted access and the silencing of those who speak.
A city turned into a killing ground
Between late April 2024 and October 2025, women, men and children in El Fasher were held in a harrowing siege. The Rapid Support Forces and affiliated Arab militias used foreign-supplied weapons to encircle, starve and terrorise the city, and ultimately to pursue the destruction of the Zaghawa, Fur, Berti and Tunjur ethnic groups.
As the city fell in October 2025, survivors described fighters breaking into homes, pulling women and girls from hiding, separating men and boys from their families, and perpetrating rape in front of children and spouses to destroy the bonds that held non-Arab communities together.
The siege did not emerge in isolation
El Fasher reflects decades of militia empowerment, structural marginalisation and impunity in Darfur. The paramilitary model was built by recruiting along ethnic lines, making ethnicity its organising logic from the start.
An Islamist-military coup overthrows the civilian government, beginning a security-first, exclusionary state.
Militarised governance, reliance on militias and intelligence services, and systematic marginalisation of non-Arab communities.
Arab militias armed by the state. The 2003 Darfur genocide kills at least 200,000 and displaces nearly two million.
Ends the North–South civil war, but does not resolve the conflict in Darfur.
The Janjaweed are reorganised into the RSF — a formal paramilitary with its own command and a direct line to the presidency.
Open war erupts nationwide on 15 April 2023, with Darfur a central theatre of the violence.
El Fasher, North Darfur
The last major city in Darfur outside RSF control — a refuge for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, ringed by towns along the roads north, east and south.
The encirclement
RSF and allied militias close a ring around the city, progressively tightening and severing the routes in and out. The siege would hold for more than 500 days.
Hunger as a method
The RSF blocked humanitarian aid convoys and attacked the few clinics, pharmacies and water points still serving the encircled population — weaponising hunger against entire communities.
Flight toward Tawila
As the city fell, civilians fled primarily toward Tawila. At checkpoints in and around El Fasher — Al-Amal Gate, Gerni, Tura, Shagra and Hela Al-Sheg — women and girls were stopped, raped, abducted or killed on the paths they hoped would lead to safety.
547 days, from encirclement to capture
War erupts between the SAF and the RSF. Darfur is immediately a central flashpoint of the fighting.
The RSF establishes a de facto monopoly over supply routes, with checkpoints and "taxation" points along the Kutum–El Fasher and Kebkabiya–El Fasher axes.
After clashes in Mellit, Kutum and along the Tawila–Kabkabiya axis, the RSF fully encircles El Fasher. The 547-day siege begins.
El Fasher shelters over 800,000 internally displaced people, primarily non-Arab. Critical infrastructure, including healthcare, has collapsed.
Famine is declared in the IDP camps. Over April–August 2024 the RSF razes Zaghawa villages west of El Fasher, with mass killings and disappearances.
The Abu Shouk and Zamzam IDP camps are attacked and indiscriminately shelled, killing hundreds of non-Arab civilians.
The RSF builds an encircling wall and shells markets and camps daily. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped inside the city.
El Fasher is captured. An initial massacre kills more than 6,000 civilians — with estimates up to tens of thousands by December. Over 62,000 flee; more than 250,000 remain unaccounted for.
Rape and sexual violence as a strategy
Legal Action Worldwide documented a pattern of conflict-related sexual violence as deliberate as it was devastating. Rape, multiple-perpetrator ("gang") rape and sexualised enslavement formed a defining feature of the RSF's campaign: by design, not as a by-product of war.
Women and girls were stopped while trying to reach markets, fetch water or collect firewood — then assaulted as punishment for moving without "permission," or as an instrument of terror.
Fighters perpetrated rape in front of children and spouses, an attack aimed at shattering the bonds that held non-Arab communities together.
Pregnant women were disproportionately affected, including through assaults that resulted in miscarriages and long-term reproductive harm.
"Documentation is resistance — and naming what is happening in Darfur is the first step toward ensuring it does not go unpunished."
Naming the crimes
On the basis of the evidence, there are reasonable grounds to believe the RSF and allied militias committed acts that amount to three categories of international crime during the fall of El Fasher.
Rape and other sexual violence, attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and the use of starvation as a method of warfare, committed in the context of armed conflict.
CRSV and SGBV forming part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against the non-Arab civilian population of El Fasher.
In their ethnicised form, these acts constituted a central component of a genocidal campaign directed at the Zaghawa, Fur, Berti and Tunjur ethnic groups.
A war sustained from outside
The RSF's capacity to encircle El Fasher and bombard civilian neighbourhoods was enabled by a continuous inflow of foreign-origin arms, ammunition, vehicles and drones.
UAE & China
There are reasonable grounds to believe arms and ammunition originating in the United Arab Emirates and China were routed into Darfur and likely used by RSF units involved in the siege.
Through Chad & Libya
The territory of Chad and eastern Libya, under Haftar-aligned control, served as a critical conduit for fighters and materiel moving toward Darfur.
Aligned with the violence
These shipments aligned with key inflection points in the siege — renewed offensives on non-Arab areas and repeated strikes on health facilities and water points.
What was supplied, and by whom
LAW's military and munitions experts traced materiel through serial numbers, manufacturer markings, captured crates and verified imagery. The UAE functioned as the RSF's principal external enabler, with weapons of several origins reaching Darfur through its procurement and transit networks.
Chinese Wing Loong II & FeiHong-95 UAVs and one-way attack drones, supplied to the RSF by the UAE.
Chinese Norinco 155mm AH-4 howitzers — the UAE is the only confirmed foreign customer.
Russian-made 9M133 "Kornet" ATGMs, diverted via UAE-linked procurement pathways.
Chinese Type 53 & PP87 and Bulgarian 81mm projectiles, marked for the UAE or third states and diverted.
Emirati STREIT Group Spartan 2 and NIMR AJBAN 440A armoured personnel carriers.
A significant portion of RSF materiel originated with manufacturers in China, Bulgaria and states of the former Yugoslavia, exported lawfully to third states then re-exported to the RSF, most prominently via the UAE. Canadian-branded Sterling Cross rifles and mortars on Kenyan contracts were also documented in RSF hands.
The UN Panel of Experts documented a "heavy rotation of cargo planes" from Abu Dhabi to Amdjarass airport in eastern Chad, and overland routes via Kufra in eastern Libya, under Haftar-aligned control — bringing weapons "several times a week."
Supplied with knowledge of the risk
Arms transfers continued after years of credible public reporting on RSF atrocities in Darfur, while UN bodies and independent experts were already documenting killings, widespread rape, and forced displacement.
Supplying states did so with the knowledge that their support carried a substantial risk of contributing to atrocity crimes, against the backdrop of the RSF's openly genocidal rhetoric.
There are reasonable grounds to believe Emirati-origin or Emirati-destined systems — armed and reconnaissance drones, long-range artillery, mortars, anti-armour munitions and armoured vehicles — reached RSF use in Darfur after April 2023.
A significant portion of the arms originated with manufacturers in China, Bulgaria and states of the former Yugoslavia, then were diverted and re-exported to the RSF, in significant part via the UAE, likely without the producing states' consent.
External support functioned as a critical advantage, directly enabling the RSF to encircle El Fasher, sustain prolonged bombardment, and impose conditions of life incompatible with civilian survival.
Deliveries via Amdjarass in northern Chad and eastern Libya were sustained throughout the siege, with credible evidence of transfers occurring several times per week.
Newly delivered drones and equipment often arrived just before shifts in RSF tactics, such as more precise attacks and wider surveillance of the routes used by displaced people.
Bringing these decisions within reach of the law
States that supplied or facilitated arms to the RSF — and knew or should have known the substantial risk — must immediately halt all transfers, investigate how those decisions were made, and accept their legal and moral responsibilities toward victims.
Cooperation with the ICC's ongoing Darfur investigations.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan.
Filing cases for conflict-related violations including CRSV.
LAW continues to collect and preserve evidence for future accountability.
Not more statements of concern, but accountability
Permit full humanitarian access; cease all attacks on civilians; release all those held in confinement, including in sexualised enslavement; and suspend and remove implicated commanders.
Do not obstruct humanitarian, medical and protection actors — including specialised services for survivors — and guarantee safe passage for civilians to reach them.
Ratify the Maputo Protocol; align war-crimes, crimes-against-humanity and genocide definitions with the Rome Statute; repeal immunity and limitation provisions; cooperate fully with the ICC and FFM.
Immediately suspend all transfers risking use by the RSF; investigate transfers between 15 April 2023 and 29 October 2025; and revise export controls with robust CRSV and starvation risk assessments.
Apply a presumption of denial for transfers to Sudan; strengthen enforcement against illicit flows; exercise universal jurisdiction; and expand safe pathways for survivors.
Strengthen and monitor the Darfur arms embargo; impose targeted sanctions; establish a Chapter VII civilian protection mission in Darfur; and reinforce the ICC's jurisdiction.
Renew, resource and safeguard the independence of the Fact-Finding Mission, with dedicated CRSV and SGBV capacity, and integrate gender and children's rights across all Sudan work.
Prioritise investigations into RSF conduct in El Fasher and North and West Darfur — rape, sexualised enslavement, starvation, persecution and genocide against the Zaghawa, Fur, Berti and Tunjur.
Scale up survivor services and SGBV risk mitigation; sustain support to women-led frontline organisations; and fund survivor-centred documentation and reparations.
"We cannot undo what has been done in El Fasher. We can ensure that the decisions which armed and enabled the RSF are finally named and brought within the reach of law."
Legal Action Worldwide is an independent, non-profit organisation of human rights lawyers and jurists working in fragile and conflict-affected areas, with a particular focus on gender equality and gender-based violence.
Produced in partnership with SIHA and in cooperation with three Sudanese organisations: the Civilian Network for Justice; Safe Space for Women and Girls; and Juzour for Human Rights.
Names of participants and locations have been handled with care for confidentiality. The figures reflect only what could be reached amid communications blackouts and restricted access.