Sudan’s warring factions are facing new pressure to end the war after rights groups lobbied the UN Human Rights Council to establish a taskforce on atrocities, potentially harming the shuttle diplomacy of junta leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan who has been seeking legitimacy over his rival Mohamed Hamdani Daglo ‘Hemedti’.

And the situation now places Khartoum where Ethiopia was two years ago after activists lobbied for the creation of a panel of experts to investigate war crimes in Tigray.

Last week, 17 rights groups across Africa wrote to the UN Human Rights Council, asking that such a team be established to place warlords at the crime scene and save the country from collapsing.

“We urge the (UN Human Rights) Council members to support the establishment of this mission to increase Sudanese people’s access to justice and accountability and enhance the chances of creating a transitional justice process that will support the efforts of peace-making in Sudan,” they wrote in an open letter on Wednesday.

These include Sudanese Doctors for Human Rights, Governance Programming Overseas, Sudanese Women Rights Action, International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, African Center for Democracy and Human Rights Studies, International Federation for Human Rights, Southern African Human Rights Defenders Network (Southern Defenders), Centre for Democracy and Human Rights – CDD Mozambique and Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

They argued that the war in Sudan is “one of the worst humanitarian crises” at the moment and warring factions have closed access routes to humanitarian service for the vulnerable including women and children.

“The absence of the state institutions and the rule of law led to worsening human rights violations in the country. Local justice systems and law enforcement institutions collapsed and have not functioned in most of Sudan since the war erupted.

“There is an essential need for the establishment of an independent and international fact-finding mission to investigate human rights violations and collect evidence on abuses, GBV crimes and alleged war crimes.”