Amnesty names the UAE in El Fasher anniversary report as Geneva talks produce no truce

Amnesty International published testimony on Thursday 23 October, days before the first anniversary of the RSF’s capture of El Fasher on 26 October 2025, documenting schools converted into detention centres, tightly controlled movement, unlawful killings, torture and deaths from starvation in detention, with Zaghawa and Masalit people more likely to be detained and abused. Less than one tenth of the pre-war population remains in the city. “The RSF’s claims that El Fasher is safe for civilians to return to after the horrific massacres that took place one year ago could not be further from the truth,” said Secretary General Agnès Callamard. “A pervasive pall of fear hangs over El Fasher today.” The findings rest on 25 interviews conducted in August and September — 19 residents and six humanitarian workers, most of whom left the city between July and August — a small and self-selected sample. Amnesty wrote to the RSF on 9 October and had received no response by publication.

The policy ask is the escalation. Alongside calls for a ceasefire and the urgent deployment of an international force, Amnesty is asking all states, including the United Kingdom, to cease arms transfers to the United Arab Emirates until Abu Dhabi stops supplying weapons to the RSF — a move from a general embargo demand to a named third country. A UN fact-finding mission reported on 19 February that the RSF carried out ethnically targeted killings, widespread sexual violence and enforced disappearances during the takeover, acts it said bore “hallmarks of genocide” against the Zaghawa and Fur. Diplomats met in Geneva on 21 October for the sixth consultative meeting on Sudan; Asharq Al-Awsat reported the session declared there is no military solution and called for a humanitarian truce and an end to foreign interference.

Assessment: Read the Geneva communiqué and the Amnesty demand together and the shape of the problem is visible. Twenty-seven delegations can agree that foreign interference must end precisely because the phrase names nobody; Amnesty’s value this week is that it names someone, and accepts the diplomatic cost. Abu Dhabi denies arming the RSF and nothing in this file adjudicates that. What the anniversary does establish is that a year of documentation has produced no change in access, no force deployment and no truce, and that the RSF’s own line — that El Fasher is safe for returns — is now the claim the next twelve months will be argued over.