Lord Collins of Highbury, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (HL5801):
Question by Lord Alton of Liverpool:
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they are aware of any organisations collecting and preserving evidence of atrocity crimes in Darfur. (HL5801)
Tabled on: 14 March 2025
Answer:
Lord Collins of Highbury:
The UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), established following UK-led Security Council resolution, is the most effective mechanism to support accountability in Sudan. The FFM published its first report in September 2024 and concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe that violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by both warring parties constituted war crimes and, in the case of the Rapid Support Forces, additionally crimes against humanity. The UK is also supporting the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), a research body gathering open-source evidence about the conflict in Sudan with a view to supporting future accountability. The CIR has been able to assist the FFM in verifying reports of violations through its use of digital information. The UK also strongly supports the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) active investigation into the situation in Darfur, including allegations of crimes committed since April 2023. We welcome the ongoing cooperation between the ICC and the FFM and the significant progress made by the ICC in investigating and prosecuting past and current crimes in Darfur. The conclusion of the Ali Kushayb trial in December 2024 marks a historic milestone as the first trial concluded based on a Security Council referral.
Date and time of answer: 01 Apr 2025 at 13:10.
