Joint Statement: INGOs Raise Alarm over Escalating Violence in El Fasher, Call for Urgent Protection of Civilians and Humanitarian Actors

October 27, 2025

International non-governmental organizations working in Sudan are sounding the alarm over the severe escalation of violence in El Fasher, North Darfur. Civilians, local responders, and aid workers are facing grave risks amid intensifying fighting and siege conditions that have severely restricted access to lifesaving assistance.

After more than a year and a half under siege-like conditions, the population of El Fasher is enduring an unbearable deterioration in living conditions and unprecedented humanitarian suffering. Homes, markets, and hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, while aid and commercial routes remain completely blocked. Food and medical supplies have been depleted, leaving families without access to basic necessities. Despite these conditions, local community-based responders continue to risk their lives to keep kitchens, clinics, and shelters functioning. Humanitarian assessments estimate that around 260,000 people remain trapped in El Fasher, facing severe protection risks and a rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis.

As the situation continues to deteriorate, the humanitarian organizations urgently call on the warring parties to:

  • Refrain from using weapons that risk indiscriminate harm to civilians.
  • Guarantee safe and unimpeded passage for civilians wishing to leave El Fasher and ensure humanitarian and commercial supplies can safely enter the area.
  • Ensure the protection of humanitarian responders, community-based organizations, and traders who are maintaining essential services under fire, and refrain from any form of retaliation or collective punishment against civilians.
  • Immediately halt attacks on civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals, water systems, markets, mosques and displacement sites, which serve as lifelines for people facing hunger, disease and displacement.

We also call on the international community, including the UN Security Council, regional bodies, donor governments and humanitarian actors, to:

  • Rapidly scale up flexible funding so that local responders can expand lifesaving operations, such as protection, food, health, water and sanitation, without delay
  • Exert all possible diplomatic pressure to end the siege of El Fasher and ensure the protection of civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law.
  • Support sustained humanitarian access by facilitating negotiations, securing safe corridors, and enabling the delivery of critical supplies.
  • Prioritize accountability efforts to deter further violations and ensure justice for victims of grave abuses.

The lives and dignity of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians, and the safety of local humanitarian responders who remain on the front-line of this crisis, are at immediate risk. The escalation of violence in El Fasher is no longer a question of future danger but of imminent catastrophe. We urge no further delay in action to protect civilians, support responders and enable the delivery of life-saving relief.

 

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