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Every year on 30 August, the world marks the International
Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. The day is an important reminder
that enforced disappearance is not merely the loss of a person from public
view. It is a continuing violation that places victims outside the protection
of the law and condemns families to live between hope and grief, often without
knowing whether their loved ones are alive, detained, tortured, or dead.
In Sudan, enforced disappearance has become one of the most
devastating and persistent features of the ongoing war between the Sudanese
Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since the outbreak of
the conflict on 15 April 2023, thousands of civilians have been subjected to
arbitrary arrest, abduction, incommunicado detention and disappearance in
circumstances that leave families without answers.
The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS) has
continued to document enforced disappearances and related violations throughout
the conflict. ACJPS’s reporting shows that these violations are being committed
alongside arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, attacks on civilians
and other grave abuses. In its earlier report, A Report on Enforced
Disappearances: One Year into Sudan War, ACJPS highlighted enforced
disappearance as a longstanding tool of repression in Sudan and warned of its
renewed use during the current conflict.
A new and expanding pattern of enforced disappearance
Enforced disappearance during the current war is not
confined to one geographic area or one method of targeting. A disturbing
pattern has emerged in which people are seized at checkpoints, taken from their
homes and places of work, abducted from streets or while fleeing violence, or
detained after being accused of supporting the opposing party.
ACJPS has documented arbitrary arrests and enforced
disappearances as recurring violations during the war, including cases
affecting activists, journalists, human rights defenders and other civilians.
Its reporting also points to a growing pattern in which disappearances
intersect with political, ethnic and identity-based targeting.
The consequences are particularly severe because detention
frequently occurs in unofficial and secret locations. The existence of such
places makes it difficult for families, lawyers and human rights organizations
to establish the whereabouts and condition of detainees. Human Rights Watch has
reported that both warring parties have engaged in widespread unlawful
detention and enforced disappearances, including the use of unofficial
detention sites.
What is emerging in Sudan is therefore not simply a pattern
of arbitrary arrest. It is a broader system of uncertainty and concealment in
which individuals can be removed from their communities without acknowledgment,
held in undisclosed locations and denied contact with their families or legal
representatives.
Women and children are not spared
Women and children have been among those most severely
affected by the expanding pattern of disappearance and abduction. For women and
girls, disappearance may expose them to heightened risks of sexual violence,
forced marriage, trafficking, exploitation and other forms of gender-based
violence. Families are often unable to report these cases because of fear of
reprisals, stigma or the collapse of communication and protection systems.
ACJPS has consistently documented the disproportionate
impact of the war on women and children, including sexual violence against
women and girls, recruitment of children, killing, displacement and other grave
violations.
The disappearance of children is particularly alarming. A
child who is separated from their family in a conflict zone, abducted during an
attack, or taken into detention may disappear into a system from which families
have little ability to obtain information. In the context of Sudan’s widespread
displacement, the separation of children from parents or caregivers can further
obscure cases of disappearance and make tracing extremely difficult.
Women also suffer as relatives of the disappeared. Mothers,
wives, sisters and daughters often become the primary searchers for missing
family members while facing economic hardship, insecurity and social pressure.
Enforced disappearance therefore creates victims beyond the person who has been
taken: it devastates entire families and communities.
The right to know cannot be denied
One of the most urgent demands in Sudan is for truth. The
families of disappeared persons have the right to know what happened to their
relatives. Both the SAF and RSF, as parties exercising control over territory
and detention facilities, must take immediate steps to disclose information
concerning all persons deprived of their liberty.
This must include:
- publishing the names and whereabouts of all persons held
in official and unofficial detention;
- granting families and lawyers access to detainees;
- providing accurate information on the fate and whereabouts
of those who have died in custody or disappeared;
- identifying and disclosing the locations of all secret or
unofficial detention centres;
- preserving all places of detention as potential crime
scenes;
- protecting and identifying mass graves and suspected
burial sites;
- preventing the destruction, concealment or tampering of
evidence; and
- facilitating the dignified identification and return of
human remains to families.
Where mass graves exist, they must not be treated as secret
remnants of the war. They are potential crime scenes and places of mourning.
Their locations must be protected, documented and subjected to independent
forensic investigation. Families have the right to know whether their loved
ones are among the dead.
A call to the warring parties
The SAF and the RSF must immediately intervene to end all
practices of enforced disappearance, abduction, secret detention and
incommunicado detention.
Both parties must:
- Immediately release all civilians arbitrarily detained.
- Publicly disclose the location and identity of every
person in their custody.
- Close all secret and unofficial detention centres.
- Provide families with verified information on the fate and
whereabouts of disappeared relatives.
- Protect women and children from abduction, disappearance
and related forms of violence.
- Provide immediate access to independent humanitarian and
human rights organizations.
- Preserve detention records, bodies, burial sites and other
evidence relevant to future investigations.
- Cooperate fully with independent national, regional and
international accountability mechanisms.
Cooperation with the two fact-finding missions
Sudan’s enforced disappearance crisis also requires
meaningful cooperation with the two important fact-finding mechanisms that have
examined the country’s human rights situation: the Independent International
Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan established by the UN Human Rights Council
and the Virtual Joint Fact-Finding Mission of the African Commission on Human
and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR).
The ACHPR’s Joint Fact-Finding Mission found that both the
SAF and RSF, together with their respective allied forces, were responsible for
documented human rights violations during the conflict and called for
accountability.
Similarly, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding
Mission has documented grave violations by both warring parties. Its 2025
reporting found deliberate and large-scale attacks against civilians and
documented conduct that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In November 2025, during an emergency session on Sudan, the
Human Rights Council further called for urgent investigation into atrocities in
El Fasher, where the Fact-Finding Mission reported evidence of killings,
torture, rape, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances on a mass scale.
The SAF and RSF must therefore cooperate fully and without
conditions with both Fact-Finding Missions and facilitate the implementation of
their recommendations. This cooperation should include:
- providing
investigators with safe and unrestricted access to relevant territories and
facilities;
- disclosing the locations of official and unofficial
detention centres;
- providing lists of detainees and persons who have died in
custody;
- preserving evidence and facilitating access to mass graves
and suspected burial sites;
- protecting witnesses, survivors and families from
retaliation;
- facilitating the tracing of missing and disappeared
persons; and
- supporting credible, independent and victim-centred
investigations leading to accountability.
Ending the war of uncertainty
The disappearance of a person does not end when the arrest takes
place. It continues every day that the authorities or armed groups refuse to
disclose what happened.
On this International Day of the Victims of Enforced
Disappearances, Sudan must confront the human cost of secrecy. Families
searching for their loved ones deserve answers. Women and children who have
been abducted or disappeared must be found and protected. Survivors of secret
detention must be heard. The dead must be identified and returned to their
families with dignity.
Sudan cannot build peace on hidden detention centres,
unidentified bodies and unmarked graves.
Both warring parties must end enforced disappearances,
disclose the fate and whereabouts of all disappeared persons, reveal the
locations of secret detention facilities and suspected mass graves, and
cooperate fully with the UN and African Fact-Finding Missions.
“The families of the disappeared have waited long enough.
Truth is not optional. Information is not a privilege. The right to know is a
right that must be respected”.