The UN Human Rights Council voted Wednesday to establish a face-finding mission to probe allegations of abuses in Sudan’s conflict.
The fighting in Sudan broke out in mid-April between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In the first weeks of the war, fighting centered in Khartoum, but it then moved to other areas including the western region of Darfur.
The Council narrowly adapted the resolution, with 19 out of the council’s 47 members voting in favor of establishing the mission. Sixteen members opposed it, while 12 countries were absent.
Proposed by the U.K., the U.S. and Norway, the resolution says the mission will “investigate and establish the facts, circumstances and root causes of all alleged human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law” in Sudan’s war.
More than 9,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, which tracks Sudan’s war.
The fighting has forced over 4.5 million people to flee their homes to other places inside Sudan and more than 1.2 million to seek refuge in neighboring countries, the U.N. migration agency says.
“Civilians in Sudan are bearing the brunt of the ongoing devastating conflict,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, a senior director with Amnesty international, said a day before the vote. “Parties to the conflict have also committed war crimes, including sexual violence and the targeting of communities based on their ethnic identity.”
The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor announced in July an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the latest fighting in Darfur.