Late last month, the city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State in western Sudan, fell to the legions of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), one of the two competing sides in the civil war that has torn Sudan apart since April 2023. During and after the capture of the city, reports proliferated of gross human rights abuses and mass summary executions by RSF forces, a number of which the fighters recorded and broadcast on social media themselves. According to the United Nations, nearly 70,000 people have fled since the city’s fall. To decode the current situation in El Fasher and Sudan more broadly, on this special broadcast of Notes from the World, we speak to three guests about the situation in El Fasher: Hala al-Karib, a Sudanese human rights activist and the regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa; Nathaniel Raymond, the Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health; and Mukesh Kapila, an author, doctor, professor, and humanitarian who served as the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator and the UN Development Program Resident Representative in Sudan from 2003 to 2004.
