No Peace Without Justice

Dr Inas Mohamed Ahmed
When the war broke out in our country, the shock was severe for the entire Sudanese people. Its effects were horrific, violent and agonising; the Sudanese people have paid the price with pure blood, precious lives and righteous martyrs from among their best sons, as well as with the displaced and refugees. The bill for this catastrophic war has never been easy. As a result, the international community initially reacted through the Human Rights Council on 11 October 2023, adopting Resolution 54/2, which established an independent international commission of inquiry into Sudan to investigate all human rights violations and verify the facts and crimes committed against civilians.
The Council set the mandate of this commission for one year (initially). The committee’s remit includes investigating what happened, collecting and analysing evidence and documents, taking testimony from witnesses and survivors of militia crimes, and documenting the information gathered. It also includes cooperating with national judicial bodies to pursue accountability. Thereafter, it submits a comprehensive report to the United Nations, followed by an interactive dialogue between the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the African Union and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide; the report resulting from that dialogue is then presented to the UN General Assembly at one of its sessions — such is the sequence of procedures.
This commission — whose mandate has since been extended for a third year — is supposed to focus its work on the human-rights situation in the areas affected by the war in Sudan. Indeed, the reports it has submitted, most recently in September, stated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in Sudan against civilians, and documented military attacks targeting cultural and educational property, places of worship, markets and hospitals, the destruction of vital infrastructure and archaeological sites — all amounting to violations of international humanitarian law.
In its latest report the commission stated that the atrocities committed against civilians — persecution on ethnic, social and political grounds; crimes of genocide; killings and torture; arbitrary detention; enslavement; rape; forced displacement; the deliberate use of starvation as a method of war against civilians; and inhumane treatment in arbitrary detention centres including deliberate denial of food and medical care; and the forcible displacement of indigenous populations — are all war crimes awaiting justice.
Behind every story told by survivors of militia crimes is a continuing human tragedy and wounds that have not healed, which demand the rule of law and the prosecution of the terrorist, rapist, and murderer.
The criminality of the terrorist militia did not stop there: they looted humanitarian aid convoys. They prevented aid from reaching civilians, and they killed five aid workers and fifteen civilians in the Koma area when the humanitarian convoy bound for El Fasher was struck by a bomb in June 2025, which worsened the humanitarian situation in El Fasher. The city has been living under a deadly siege imposed by the rebel militia since May 2024.
We are talking about crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the rebel militias, which require legal accountability and prosecution, designation of those violations as criminal, classification of the criminal militia as terrorist, and referral of its leaders to international justice. So, where are the mechanisms of international law that protect human rights? Why has the militia not yet been designated a “terrorist group”? Why does the international community not move to call for peace and to stop the war — by any means—except when the armed forces advance victorious and when the defeated Emirati militia’s cries grow loud?
No peace will be achieved unless justice is realised on the ground and the terrorist militia is uprooted completely, its actions and leaders criminalised — because their continued existence and the failure to hold perpetrators accountable leaves embers that could re-ignite the war at any time. Therefore, there is no peace without justice, and there will be no justice unless the perpetrators (the leaders of the terrorist militia) and those who supported and aided them are brought to trial.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=8111