G7 foreign ministers and EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas on Wednesday urged Sudan's warring parties to cease hostilities and actions that could lead to atrocities or endanger civilians, as they fight for control of the city of Al Obeid.
In a statement, the ministers also called on the UN Security Council to expand the years-old arms embargo on the Darfur region to cover all of Sudan, and urged foreign powers to halt military and financial support to the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The statement came a day after the World Food Programme warned that Sudan was at risk of sliding into deeper hunger due to its three-year civil war and cuts in aid funding.
A senior WFP official said the risk had grown further because of rising agricultural costs linked to the Iran war, threatening to reverse gains made after famine took hold in parts of Sudan.
Carl Skau, the WFP's acting executive director, told Reuters that about five million people were facing emergency or catastrophic levels of hunger in Sudan, even after an intensive aid response had helped to reduce the number of people in famine-like conditions.
“It's a massive crisis, both in terms of numbers, but also the gravity,” he said. More than 100,000 people are still facing famine-like conditions, with almost 19.5 million facing high levels of acute food insecurity.
The G7 and EU statement and the WFP's warning indicate growing international alarm over Sudan, with the focus now on avoiding a repeat of the atrocities that took place after the RSF seized the Darfur city of El Fasher in October.
The atrocities in El Fasher claimed thousands of lives. They sparked an international outcry and a flood of condemnations, to which the RSF responded by claiming it would conduct an inquiry and bring the perpetrators to justice.
The UN has also accused the RSF of killing thousands of members of the non-Arab Masalit tribe in the western Darfur city of Geneina in summer 2023. The killings also forced tens of thousands to flee across the border to Chad.
The Sudanese army also stands accused of atrocities, including indiscriminate bombing and the use of chemical weapons. Both sides' commanders are under sanctions due to alleged war crimes.
Sudan's civil war is the latest in a series of conflicts that has plagued the ethnically and religiously diverse nation since it received independence in 1956. The current war has so far killed tens of thousands, displaced about 14 million and created the world's largest humanitarian crisis.
However, army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan has consistently rejected invitations by regional and world powers to enter negotiations to end the war. He insists the RSF must first withdraw from cities under its control. If not, he has repeatedly warned, the army would press on fighting until the paramilitary surrenders or is vanquished.
RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo has publicly stated he is willing to enter negotiations, although many believe his remarks were designed to secure international legitimacy and that he is unwilling, in reality, to give up territorial gains.
The RSF, which has its roots in the notorious Janjaweed militia, controls the whole of Darfur, an area about the size of France, as well as parts of the neighbouring Kordofan region and Blue Nile in the south.
The army controls the capital Khartoum along with the eastern, central and northern regions. Most of the fighting between the two sides is now focused in Kordofan, where the city of Al Obeid is under partial RSF siege.
In the latest international bid to convince the warring sides to enter negotiations, the EU this week approved new trade prohibitions on Sudan’s gold sector. The latest measures, which EU foreign ministers approved on Monday, include an import ban on Sudanese gold and a ban on selling cyanide and mercury to the country.
The penalties also restrict Sudan’s ability to move gold into the EU through other countries.
Sudan’s government officially exported 14.7 tonnes of gold last year, down from 22.9 tonnes in 2024. But officials in the country have continuously complained that Sudan loses billions of dollars every year to smuggling networks.
About $5 billion worth of gold was smuggled last year into neighbouring countries, including Chad, South Sudan and Egypt, according to the state-run Sudanese Mineral Resources Company.
