On the escalation of the war and the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan

–having regard to UN Security Council Resolution 1591 (2005) on the Sudan sanctions regime, calling for targeted sanctions and an arms embargo,

–having regard to UN Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008) on acts of sexual violence against civilians in armed conflicts,

–having regard to the Council conclusions of 20 October 2025 on Sudan,

–having regard to Council Decision (CFSP) 2025/2369 of 20 November 2025 amending Decision (CFSP) 2023/2135 concerning restrictive measures in view of activities undermining the stability and political transition of Sudan,

–having regard to the statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on Sudan of 20 November 2025,

–having regard to Council Common Position 2001/931/CFSP of 27 December 2001 on the application of specific measures to combat terrorism,

–having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 2580/2001 of 27 December 2001 on specific restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities with a view to combating terrorism,

–having regard to the Commission communication entitled ‘A Strengthened Commitment to Equality between Women and Men’ (COM(2010)0078),

–having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A.whereas the conflict in Sudan erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ‘Hemedti’ when a transition to civilian rule broke down; whereas the ensuing heavy fighting, which quickly spread from the capital Khartoum to other parts of Sudan, particularly Darfur and Kordofan, has devastated communities, displaced millions and exacerbated an already dire humanitarian crisis;

B.whereas the United Nations has described the humanitarian crisis in Sudan as among the world’s largest, with tens of thousands killed since 2023, over 13 million people displaced, and some 25 million facing extreme hunger; whereas the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs has classed Sudan as the ‘epicentre of suffering in the world’;

C.whereas the city of El Fasher was held under siege for over 500 days before the RSF rampaged through the city; whereas during and after the siege of El Fasher, the RSF committed mass killings, ethnic violence, sexual and gender-based violence, abductions, torture and attacks on hospitals and internal displacement sites; whereas the RSF took the city on 26 October 2025, leading to a death toll that has been estimated to have reached several thousand civilian lives; whereas similar siege tactics, indiscriminate shelling and grave abuses have been increasingly documented in cities including El Obeid and along major displacement routes;

D.whereas the UN Human Rights Office has reported on multiple, alarming cases of the RSF carrying out atrocities, including summary executions, after seizing control of large parts of El Fasher, North Darfur and the town of Bara in North Kordofan state; whereas the RSF has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes throughout the current conflict;

E.whereas international humanitarian law prohibits violence against individuals no longer participating in hostilities, violence against civilians and the use of starvation as a weapon of war;

F.whereas because of the ongoing conflict in Sudan more than 12 million people are at risk of rape and other forms of gender-based violence; whereas children are at particular risk, with UNICEF reporting several hundred cases of children being raped since the start of 2024; whereas the real figures are expected to be much higher; whereas the youngest reported survivors of rape as a weapon of war in Sudan were one year old;

G.whereas UNICEF has reported how rape as a weapon of war has become shockingly commonplace in Sudan; whereas rape is regularly committed as armed men raid homes, attack girls on the street, or kidnap them; whereas girls who are raped, especially those who become pregnant as a result of rape, are often rejected by their families and communities;

H.whereas the EU has committed to combating all forms of gender-based violence and has previously condemned the widespread sexual violence against women and children committed by both the SAF and RSF and called for the monitoring and investigation of sexual violence in Sudan;

I.whereas UN Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008) recognises sexual violence as a weapon and tactic of war and states that rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute a war crime, a crime against humanity, or a constitutive act with respect to genocide;

J.whereas during the rampage of El Fasher, the RSF also stormed a maternity hospital, the last functioning health facility in El Fasher, reportedly killing 460 patients and their companions; whereas the UN reported that this attack had left more than 6 000 pregnant women with no access to life-saving maternal care;

K.whereas the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and its partners continue to deliver reproductive health and protection services, but the recent international funding cuts have forced UNFPA to withdraw from more than half of the 93 health facilities it was supporting in Sudan, meaning only one in four facilities that offer clinical support to rape victims is currently functional;

L.whereas the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan has reported that both the SAF and the RSF are responsible not only for direct and large-scale attacks against civilians, forcing many to flee, but also for the extensive destruction of infrastructure essential for survival; whereas SAF personnel and allied forces are also implicated in acts of sexualised torture against those in detention;

M.whereas there are currently three accountability mechanisms in place, namely the UN Fact-Finding Mission and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) Fact-Finding Mission of the African Union, which were both established after the 2023 conflict, along with the mandate of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide committed in Darfur since 2002 issued by the UN Security Council in 2005 ;

N.whereas the conflict in Sudan is being fuelled by support and interests from external powers, primarily the United Arab Emirates (UAE); whereas weapons used in the conflict have been traced back to Russia and Iran, among other countries;

O.whereas the UAE is allied with the RSF and has provided crucial logistical support to the paramilitary fighters who conducted the deadly assault on El Fasher; whereas the UAE has been credibly accused of secretly supplying weapons to Sudanese paramilitaries via neighbouring Chad;

P.whereas Sudan’s ambassador to the EU warned that European-made weapons are finding their way to the battlefield in Sudan via the UAE, whereas reports by investigative journalists earlier this year traced munitions manufactured in Bulgaria from their sale to the UAE into the hands of RSF fighters; whereas Amnesty International has highlighted alleged instances in which RSF fighters have used armoured vehicles made by the UAE containing French military systems;

Q.whereas in April 2025, the EU and the UAE agreed to launch negotiations on an ambitious and commercially beneficial free trade agreement (FTA), with the first round of negotiations taking place on 24 June 2025;

R.whereas on 20 November 2025 the High Representative on behalf of the European Union condemned the atrocities committed by the RSF, and the Foreign Affairs Council adopted restrictive measures against Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo, the second in command of the RSF;

S.whereas the international community has failed to put a stop to the violence and suffering in Sudan; whereas arrest warrants issued by the ICC have largely not been executed; whereas impunity for atrocities committed since 2003 has entrenched cycles of violence and undermined trust in state institutions;

T.whereas the ongoing war has substantially damaged the agricultural sector in Sudan; whereas, in particular, areas controlled by the RSF are facing serious food insecurity following the destruction of agricultural capacity, the displacement of farmers, power cuts and produce transport blockages;

1.Condemns in the strongest possible terms all atrocities committed by the RSF in Darfur, El Fasher, El Obeid, Babanusa and other areas, including mass killings, rape, sexual slavery, torture, enforced disappearances, attacks on hospitals and humanitarian facilities, and the use of starvation as a method of warfare;

2.Deplores the lack of international response, in particular following reports of the RSF’s widespread extrajudicial killings and other serious violations against civilians and others in El Fasher and as people try to flee, as well as of relentless attacks and the 18-month famine-inducing siege;

3.Expresses grave concerns that the RSF’s crimes in El Fasher are reminiscent of previous atrocities in El Geneina in June 2023 and Ardamata in November 2023, which formed part of an ethnic cleansing campaign by the RSF and their allies targeting the Masalit and other non-Arab communities, and that the context and the widespread, ethnically targeted nature of the killings there raised the possibility that they were acts of genocide;

4.Calls for the EU and the Member States, given evidence of the mass atrocities in Sudan and the nature of the atrocities committed by the RSF over the past two and a half years, to heed their obligations under the Genocide Convention and take all reasonable measures within their power to prevent genocide in El Fasher and elsewhere in Sudan at the hands of the RSF, including in their engagement with the UAE, given its continued support for the RSF;

5.Condemns all other serious violations committed by the RSF, including widespread sexual violence, attacks on hospitals and aid workers and the use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas, and by the SAF, including indiscriminate aerial bombardments in populated areas, ill treatment, torture and summary executions of detainees, and sexual violence, since the beginning of the conflict in Sudan; condemns the repeated deliberate blocking and looting of humanitarian aid, and the targeting of emergency responders and human rights defenders by all parties to the conflict;

6.Welcomes the EU’s restrictive measures against RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo announced on 20 November 2025; calls for more actors implicated in war crimes to be sanctioned for serious violations of international humanitarian law, including crimes of sexual violence and starvation, as well as individuals or entities violating the UN embargo; calls for the freezing of assets of individuals and entities implicated in these violations;

7.Notes the criteria for defining terrorist offences and designating terrorist groups set out in Directive (EU) 2017/541 and strongly calls on the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (VP/HR) and the Council to initiate, on the basis of the available evidence and in line with Common Position 2001/931/CFSP, to take the necessary steps to commence the procedure of designating the RSF as a terrorist organisation under EU law;

8.Calls for an immediate ceasefire to alleviate the suffering of the Sudanese people and work towards lasting peace in the country; calls on the warring parties to immediately cease all attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, including indiscriminate attacks, summary executions and widespread rape and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls, as well as the destruction of homes, schools and hospitals;

9.Insists on rapid, unrestricted and unhindered humanitarian access for humanitarian organisations;

10.Calls on the warring parties to restore communication services throughout Sudan without delay, ending internet blackouts that violate Sudanese people’s right to information, hinder the delivery of humanitarian and emergency services, affect the safety and protection of civilians and obstruct crucial monitoring and reporting on ongoing violations of international human rights and humanitarian law;

11.Calls on the warring parties to facilitate the movement of agricultural goods and produce and lift blockages of trading routes for farmers to enable access to national markets in El Fasher and other areas under acute risk of famine;

12.Calls on the warring parties to cease targeted attacks and harassment of Sudanese activists, human rights defenders, journalists and civil society representatives;

13.Regrets the lack of leadership shown by the EU Foreign Affairs Council in the High Representative’s statement of 20 November 2025 on Sudan; echoes the call of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and insists that the EU, its Member States and like-minded parties act urgently to prevent the commission of large-scale atrocities by the RSF and allied fighters; calls for the EU and its Member States to bolster coordinated international and regional diplomatic pressure on the SAF and the RSF to end violations and attacks on civilians;

14.Calls strongly for the EU and its Member States to spearhead comprehensive access negotiations to ensure humanitarian aid flows through all possible points, including cross-border, crossline and via air transport, and to enable equal access for all humanitarian actors, including international non-governmental organisations and local responders in areas without a UN presence, which can scale up effectively in areas where access and resources improve; stresses that there is no time to lose to rapidly increase humanitarian support and establish unconditional humanitarian corridors, to achieve the lifting of sieges, to facilitate the delivery of life-saving aid, and enable the safe passage of civilians trying to escape violence;

15.Observes with deep concern and regret recent cuts by EU Member States to their funding of humanitarian aid, international organisations and official development assistance; highlights the triage this forces the UN and other international organisations to undertake when it comes to delivering humanitarian aid; calls for the EU and its Member States to immediately step up funding for UNFPA in Sudan to ensure the provision of life-saving humanitarian aid, including so that the many Sudanese victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence can access the life-saving healthcare and mental health support they desperately need;

16.Calls for the EU and its Member States to redouble diplomatic efforts toward both warring parties and use all instruments at their disposal to ensure access for all accountability mechanisms, to urgently respond to serious human rights and international humanitarian law violations in Sudan and to hold perpetrators to account for these violations;

17.Welcomes the commitment included in the Foreign Affairs Council conclusions of 20 October 2025 on Sudan that the EU will ‘work together with partners to advance concrete measures for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure’; calls on the Commission and the Council to develop these concrete measures without delay and effectively support robust initiatives to protect civilians in collaboration with partners in the region and around the world;

18.Calls on the UN Secretary-General to assess to what extent the UN can bolster civilian protection as quickly as possible; encourages the UN, the African Union and other regional organisations to urgently consider the deployment of a mission to physically protect civilians and monitor and report on human rights and international humanitarian law violations;

19.Calls for the strict enforcement of the UN arms embargo on Darfur and stresses that all countries and entities that have violated the arms embargo must be held accountable; supports efforts to expand the UN arms embargo on Darfur to cover the entire country and calls for the EU and its Member States to work within the UN Security Council to achieve this, stressing the significant escalation of the violence and its impact on civilians, and the flagrant violation of the current embargo by various actors fuelling the Sudan conflict;

20.Expresses its deep concern that neither the Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union nor the European Council President statement following his meeting with the leadership of the UAE reflected the impact of arms embargo violations by the UAE;

21.Expresses its concerns over possible violations of the UN arms embargo on Darfur, including by the UAE; strongly urges all states, therefore, in particular the UAE, to stop providing weapons and ammunition to the SAF, the RSF and other armed actors in Sudan and to respect the UN Security Council arms embargo on Darfur;

22.Calls on the EU Member States and all countries, given the credible reports of the UAE supplying arms to the RSF and the Member States’ legal obligations under the Darfur arms embargo and the Genocide Convention, to immediately cease the sale of arms to the UAE;

23.Calls strongly for the EU, in the light of the UAE’s clear role in the continuation of the suffering of millions of people in Sudan, to freeze the negotiations on the EU-UAE FTA without delay and only restart them on the condition that the UAE ceases its support of and cooperation with the RSF, including the supply of arms and ammunition;

24.Urges the Commission and the VP/HR to address RSF financing and procurement networks linked to the UAE in all relevant EU dialogues and negotiations with the UAE, including discussions on trade, anti-money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism, and raw-materials, and to include binding due-diligence and traceability provisions requiring a full chain of custody for gold and other raw materials entering the EU to ensure they do not originate from RSF-controlled or RSF-laundered supply chains;

25.Recognises that this conflict in 2025 is in part a continuation of the violence that started two decades ago and echoes the assessment of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that ensuring accountability for violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law by all parties to the conflict is critical to ensure that fresh cycles of violations and abuses do not recur;

26.Express its firm support for the work of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan (UN FMM) and the African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights-mandated Joint Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan (ACHPR FFM); calls strongly for the EU and the Member States to ensure that the three current accountability mechanisms for Sudan, namely the UN FFM, the ACHPR FFM and the ICC investigation, are maintained and sufficiently resourced;

27.Calls for concrete steps towards comprehensive accountability to address crimes committed since April 2023, including supporting an expansion of the ICC’s jurisdiction to the whole of Sudan, establishing an internationalised justice mechanism for Sudan, and bringing national proceedings under universal jurisdiction; welcomes the ICC’s ongoing investigation into Darfur since 2005 and takes note that a verdict is pending in the court’s first trial of Darfur crimes;

28.Calls strongly for the EU and its Member States to ensure sufficient financial and human resources for all ongoing efforts toward investigation and accountability, including the work of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan established by the UN Human Rights Council;

29.Urges Sudan’s warring parties to fully cooperate with the ICC, including by surrendering those wanted by the ICC and providing access and support for ICC officials, and releasing arbitrarily detained and falsely imprisoned persons, journalists and political prisoners;

30.Supports strengthening the use of universal jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute those responsible for grave violations in Sudan and insists they must not find a safe haven in the EU;

31.Calls for a significant increase in financial and technical support for civil society organisations to document human rights abuses and violations;

32.Stresses that addressing the situation of women and girls in Sudan, and in particular the ongoing conflict-related sexual violence, must be prioritised in the efforts aimed at addressing the Sudan conflict; underlines the need for sufficient support for emergency social services and to lend specific support for the protection, care, treatment and support mechanisms for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence;

33.Highlights the specific discrimination, persecution and violence faced by Sudanese people of Black African or non-Arab descent, such as the Masalit ethnic group and other ethnic groups; underlines the specific protection needed as a result of this persecution to prevent genocide;

34.Calls on the neighbouring states to open their borders to Sudanese refugees, and for the EU and its Member States to rapidly increase emergency funding for the humanitarian response in Sudan and in refugee camps in neighbouring countries;

35.Expresses its concern about reports that in Egypt, security forces, including EU-funded border guards, have arrested Sudanese refugees over irregular entry or stay, detained them in harsh conditions, and forcibly returned them to Sudan without access to asylum procedures; insists that EU Member States and partner countries ensure Sudanese refugees’ right to asylum and refrain from returning Sudanese nationals to Sudan or to any third country where they may be at risk of being returned to Sudan;

36.Calls strongly for the EU and its Member States to provide financial support for Sudanese human rights defenders, civil society representatives and journalists, including those in exile, in order to protect them and enable them to continue their important work; stresses the importance of including their views and concerns in any peace process or decision-making that affects them;

37.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the authorities of Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, the African Union and the United Nations.