Amnesty finds El Fasher at seven per cent of its population a year after capture

Amnesty International published new testimony from El Fasher residents on 23 October 2026, timed to the first anniversary of the Rapid Support Forces' capture of the city on 26 October 2025. The organisation describes unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, torture and starvation conditions continuing a year on, with the remaining population under RSF surveillance. Middle East Eye, writing up the findings the same evening, reported that El Fasher now holds roughly seven per cent of the population it had a year ago — a decline of more than ninety per cent. Residents told Amnesty that a small number of humanitarian organisations had begun operating in the city again as of September 2026, eleven months after near-total exclusion. Amnesty’s asks are a ceasefire, the urgent deployment of an international protection force, and a halt to arms transfers by all states, including the United Kingdom. It says it is aware of no diplomatic effort to establish such a force. The testimony was gathered remotely and Amnesty says so.

The documentary record behind the anniversary is older than the anniversary. The Human Rights Council’s Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan, created in October 2023, found in February 2026 that events in El Fasher carried the “hallmarks of genocide,” citing mass killings and ethnic targeting. The diplomatic track has moved on a separate rhythm: the UN-organised Sixth Consultative Meeting on peace initiatives opened in Geneva on 21 October, the sixth such gathering of mediators since 2024. Massad Boulos, an adviser to President Trump, told the session there is no military solution and backed the Quintet — the African Union, Arab League, UN, EU and IGAD — in enabling a Sudanese-led process, according to The National of Abu Dhabi. The characterisation that the warring parties were absent and that no direct SAF–RSF negotiation has occurred comes from the aggregator Rio Times and is not independently confirmed here.

The question of external supply reached the UN’s own leadership contest this week. The Associated Press reported on 23 October that Lana Nusseibeh, a UAE minister of state, has entered the race for Secretary-General and that her candidacy immediately drew scrutiny over Abu Dhabi’s role in Sudan. Nusseibeh says she wants to “rebuild trust” in the organisation and that it should use “quiet diplomacy.” The UAE has dismissed Sudan’s complaint at the International Court of Justice, filed in March 2026 and alleging complicity in Darfur, as “nothing more than a cynical publicity stunt.” Against that, the OHCHR Fact-Finding Mission’s 3 September 2026 report on weapons, fighters and external support networks found that foreign recruitment and outside backing are strengthening both belligerents, not one.

Assessment: Two tracks ran in parallel this week and neither touched the other. Amnesty’s central ask — an international protection force — has no sponsor, because the states with the lift to build one are also the states being named in the arms argument. That is why the demand reads as a reproach rather than a proposal. Watch the framing on both sides: the single-patron story is politically useful to Port Sudan and empirically incomplete, as the OHCHR mission found. The seven per cent figure needs Amnesty’s absolute baseline before anyone charts it. And a Secretary-General race turns Sudan from a protection file into a credentials file, which is a weaker forum for the people still in El Fasher.