A report released Thursday by the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan—concluding that paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed genocide against non-Arab Indigenous ethnic groups during the siege of El-Fasher—relies heavily on satellite imagery analysis conducted by the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH).
In July 2023, the Yale HRL warned the U.S. Government, the public, and the UN Security Council that a genocidal massacre could occur if El-Fasher fell to the RSF. During the RSF’s subsequent 18-month siege and capture of the city, the Yale HRL produced more than 65 reports documenting mass killings and other atrocities against the Fur, Zaghawa and other Indigenous non-Arab people.
The new UN report, “Sudan: Hallmarks of Genocide in El-Fasher,” which was released to the UN Human Rights Council, draws on the HRL’s extensive analysis of satellite imagery and open-source information such as news reports and social media posts to conclude that the RSF had what is known as dolus specialis — or “specific intent” — to commit genocide in El-Fasher and subsequently engaged in a pattern of actions consistent with that intent.
“Today’s report by the UN demonstrates the unique and essential role that remote public health monitoring of conflict can play in both warning of alleged mass atrocity crimes, including genocide, and corroborating that they have occurred,” said Danielle Poole, a research scientist in epidemiology at YSPH and faculty director at HRL. “In nonpermissive environments such as Darfur, the fusion of satellite imagery analysis with open-source information provides an irreplaceable window into the health effects of conflict and yields critical evidence of gross violations of human rights.”
Yale HRL’s reporting on El-Fasher has provided policymakers, the global public, affected populations, and humanitarian responders with timely scientifically validated and actionable information about the events that have occurred before, during, and after the siege of El-Fasher and its surrounding IDP camps, including Abu Shouk, Al Salaam, and Zamzam.
Critical contributions by Yale HRL include detecting RSF’s construction of an earthen wall, known as the berm, that trapped El-Fasher’s remaining civilians inside the city when it fell to RSF. Yale HRL also confirmed that RSF was conducting mass killings of civilians in the days and weeks following the city’s fall in October 2025, including the identification of 150 groups of objects consistent with human bodies, some of which were burned and buried by RSF forces.
“I was born in El-Fasher and the people who were murdered, raped, tortured, starved, and displaced are my friends, family, and neighbors,” said Omer Gamar-Eldin Ismail, a senior adviser at HRL and former acting minister of foreign affairs of Sudan. “Today’s report by the UN says out loud what Yale HRL’s reporting over the past nearly two years has shown in graphic detail: the people of El-Fasher were intentionally surrounded, deprived of basic aid, and slaughtered. This report is a step toward justice, but we must also all be accountable for the world’s collective failure to stop a crime that was accurately predicted by Yale HRL years before it occurred. No one can say they didn’t know what would happen.”
A UN Human Rights Office report published on Feb. 13 estimated that RSF killed at least 6,000 people in the first 72 hours following El-Fasher's takeover. Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned three RSF commanders for their role in the “18-month siege of and eventual capture of El-Fasher, in which the RSF perpetrated a horrific campaign of ethnic killings, torture, starvation, and sexual violence.”
The siege of El Fasher is part of a long history of political instability, violence, and racial and ethnic tensions in Sudan, one of the largest countries in Africa. El Fasher, located in Sudan’s Darfur region, was home to survivors of the Darfur Genocide less than 25 years ago, conducted by the Janjaweed. In the current conflict, two rival military groups—the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), whose soldiers are loyal to the de facto government leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, derived from the Janjaweed, whose fighters support paramilitary General Mohamed Hamden Dagalo, known popularly as Hemedti, are vying for control. Each is trying to fill the power vacuum created when former dictatorial Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was ousted in 2019.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been impacted by the latest fighting that started in April 2023 and shows no signs of abating. The situation in Sudan’s Darfur region, where fighting has intensified over the past year, has become the globe’s largest displacement crisis and one of the most perilous humanitarian catastrophes in the world today.
Yale HRL and other groups estimate that tens of thousands of people are missing and presumed dead. Yale HRL continues to monitor the ongoing conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces and the RSF throughout Sudan and will continue to do so until the war ends.
The UN’s report is available here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc6177-sudan-hallmarks-genocide-el-fasher-report-independent