The İnternational Community' Failure to Re Pond to Atrocitie in El-geneina and El-fa Her Ha et the Tage for a New Cata Trophe

The international community's failure to respond to atrocities in el-Geneina and el-Fasher has set the stage for a new catastrophe in el-Obeid, a city now on the front line of Sudan's 40-month war. Last month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk issued a "red alert" for the city, a commercial hub in central Sudan where 500,000 residents face daily drone attacks from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. In June alone, the RSF launched 27 drone strikes targeting fuel depots, water pumps, and the electrical grid, while blocking escape routes.

Seasonal rains threaten to make the city impassable, though Sudan's army recently regained control of the Sadarat highway linking el-Obeid to Khartoum. The pattern is painfully familiar. Last year, the RSF besieged el-Fasher in North Darfur, killing more than 6,000 civilians in days, with countless others tortured, raped, enslaved, or disappeared, according to a UN investigation released last month that declared the crimes genocide.

No serious action followed. Earlier, in West Darfur's el-Geneina, the UN and then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken both labeled RSF atrocities genocide, yet the label sparked no meaningful international response. This echoes 1994, when the US acknowledged "acts of genocide" in Rwanda but took no action, with then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher awkwardly asking, "How many acts of genocide make up a whole genocide?

The failures in Rwanda and Bosnia led to concepts like the UN's Responsibility to Protect and the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2004, the George W. Bush administration used the genocide label for Darfur as a rallying cry, but more than two decades later, genocides in the plural now drive Sudan's conflict. The politicization of intervention, from Libya in 2011 to Syria's chemical weapons "red line" under Barack Obama, has eroded the will to act. Now, the Trump administration has declared a "full-on diplomatic campaign to dismantle the capabilities of the ICC, undermining its stated goal of peace in Sudan and accountability for the violence.