One year on from the Rapid Support Forces' (RSF) takeover of North Darfur's capital, El Fasher, Amnesty International is warning that the situation remains dire, with unlawful killings, arbitrary detentions, and torture rife, while the population has dropped significantly.
In a report released on Friday, Amnesty said fewer than 70,000 people remain in the city that once had 1 million inhabitants, with humanitarian access remaining limited, and the risk of arrest for returnees high, despite claims by the paramilitary group that people are free to return.
"What we found is that El Fasher is still very much a ghost town," Laura Mills, the author of the report, told The New Arab.
Amnesty's report is based on the testimonies of 25 civilians, including six humanitarian workers, with 15 having fled the city between July and August 2026, and one who remained in the city.
Mills said part of the reason for the desertion of the city was the high risks of being there, which many of the testimonies confirmed.
"We found that many people were detained, including those who tried to return to the city. Often, men were held in prisons and detention centres where they faced torture and truly horrific conditions.
"Women and children were typically held in schools that had been converted into de facto detention centres," she said, with the report noting high levels of malnutrition in said centres.
"Moving around the city, people didn't feel safe; they felt surveilled," Mills added.
Seventeen of the 19 residents Amnesty spoke to had been arbitrarily detained, with the ethnic minority Zaghawa and Masalit people more likely to be detained. Both groups have been targeted by the RSF since the beginning of the war.
RSF killings during the fall of the city have been described as a massacre, with the UN saying that there were "hallmarks of genocide".
Mills said that ethnic minorities are automatically suspected by the RSF of being close to the country's military, which the group is fighting against in the civil war.
Amnesty spoke to those who were detained and put in prison, with many of them stating that RSF soldiers tortured and committed unlawful killings. Mamoun, a 33-year-old Zaghawa man held in Shala prison, said that the group arbitrarily shot prisoners.
Those detained are often released because families pay ransoms to the RSF, which Mills said reach up to $10,000.
She noted that these abuses by the paramilitary group are widespread across RSF-controlled Darfur, though El Fasher's years-long siege fending off the RSF has contributed to widespread suspicion of the city's residents by the group.
Humanitarian workers still operate in the city, though closely monitored by the group, which restricts their movements and prevents aid workers from speaking with residents.
Despite this, humanitarian assessments place the city, alongside much of North Darfur province, in danger of reaching IPC Level 5 famine, the highest threshold possible, in the coming months.
Mills told The New Arab that the international community had all the tools it needed to safeguard El-Fasher's residents and alleviate suffering in the country, but that it was unwilling to use them.
This includes pushing for a ceasefire and talks between the RSF and the military, which was rejected earlier in October by military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, as well as an arms embargo on the country.
"It just really feels like we have all the tools at our disposal, but the world is just sort of looking on as this horrific disaster continues to unfold, and what happened in El Fasher can easily happen somewhere else," Mills said.
