UN rights council extends Sudan abuses probe

GENEVA — The UN Human Rights Council voted Wednesday to extend its probe into alleged rights abuses in the devastating war raging in Sudan, despite Khartoum's objections.

 

Twenty-three of the council's 47 member states voted in favour of prolonging for a further year the independent international fact-finding mission on Sudan, with 12 voting against and 12 abstentions.

 

The investigation was established by the United Nations' top rights body last October to probe all alleged human rights and international humanitarian law violations in the conflict.

 

Britain and a number of other countries brought forward a draft resolution to renew its mandate.

 

"The draft resolution, is unjust, unfair," Sudan's ambassador Hassan Hamid Hassan told the council before the vote.

 

"How can a resolution adopted by this council use this unjust approach that equates a national army fulfilling its role... with a rebellious militia?

 

"This is an erroneous approach and Sudan totally rejects the content of this resolution," he said.

 

Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, South Africa and the United States were among the countries which voted yes. 

 

Countries voting no included China, Cuba, Eritrea, Indonesia, Morocco, Qatar and Sudan itself.

 

Algeria, Bangladesh, India and Malaysia were among those to abstain.

 

The three-member fact-finding mission is chaired by Mohamed Chande Othman, a former chief justice of Tanzania.

 

He is joined by Joy Ezeilo, emeritus dean of law at the University of Nigeria, and Mona Rishmawi of Jordan and Switzerland, a former UN independent expert on human rights in Somalia.

 

War has raged since April 2023 between the Sudanese army under the country's de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.