Press Statement Why it’s time to classify RSF militia rebel group as a terrorist organization

The Sudanese government has been alerting and consistently informing the international community about the terrorist and criminal nature of the rebel militia. This militia has been committing atrocities against the civilian, particularly by using the civilians as human shields and targeting of innocent and unarmed citizens, especially crimes against women and children that include sexual violence, and the recruitment of child fighters. These atrocities and crimes

put the rebel militia in the same category as ISIS groups, Boko Haram, and the Ugandan Lord’s Army movement, which the international community has classified as terrorist groups that threaten international and regional security.

The suicidal attempt by the rebel militia to attack the armored corps in Khartoum, in which large numbers of children and minors were employed as fighters, revealed that the militia does not give any weight to human, moral and religious considerations, the principles of international humanitarian law or even common human sense and what it entails in protecting children and keeping them away from the scourge of war, as expressed by the United Nations Convention to Prevent the Recruitment and Use of Children in Wars and the special rapporteur on the matter. The militia ignores all these principles and instead it insists on using children as tools to further fueling its war which ultimately aimed at kidnapping the state and subjugating society.

This comes at a time when there are frequent news and reports of the militia’s kidnapping of large numbers of girls and women, and using them as forced labor and forced exposure to rape, sexual violence, and detention, in order to obtain large sums of money from their families as ransom.

These crimes were perfectly mentioned in the statement of UN experts and concerned rapporteurs last week, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, the Special Rapporteur on Sexual Assault and the Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking.

Based on these facts, it is the duty of the international community to classify the rebel militia as a terrorist group.