Pakistan Calls for Renewed Diplomatic Push to End Sudan War

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has called for renewing diplomatic efforts to end the widening war between Sudan's rival military factions, unhindered humanitarian access, and a Sudanese-led-and-owned political process to restore peace in the country. "There is no military solution to the conflict," Ambassador Usman Jadoon, deputy permanent representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, told the UN Security Council, which met on Monday to discuss the horrendous situation in Sudan's Darfur region. Ambassador Jadoon said Pakistan continues to advocate dialogue and diplomacy, while reiterating its commitment to uphold Sudan's sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity. Sudan has been engulfed in conflict since April 2023, when fighting erupted between former allies — the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces militia (RSF). What began as a power struggle metastasized into deadly conflicts across the country, most devastating in the Darfur region, which also saw longstanding ethnic tensions that prompted allegations of genocide in the early 2000s to be reignited. Opening the debate, the Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Nazhat Shameem Khan, told the 15-member Council that the gruesome crisis in Sudan has "darkened even further" in the last six months, citing a pattern of large-scale crimes against humanity that is being repeated "in town after town" across the country's Darfur region. "Darfuris, as we speak, are being subjected to collective torture [...] including rape, arbitrary detention, executions and mass graves, all perpetrated on a mass scale," she said . "The picture that is emerging is appalling." Describing her Office's ongoing collection of evidence and intensifying investigations into alleged crimes committed in West Darfur and in the city of El Fasher — which was seized by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters in October 2025 — she cited video, audio and satellite data clearly indicating that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed.