Sudan Conflict: Berkeley Refugees Track Rights Abuses

It is perhaps the most brutal conflict of the 21st century: A war between military factions in the north African nation of Sudan has left hundreds of thousands dead, with millions displaced and millions more suffering from famine. The violence culminated last fall in the city of El Fasher, where a possible genocide left tens of thousands of civilians dead or missing.

That was the context as 10 Sudanese refugees gathered in Kampala, Uganda, for training that would give them the tools to track possible war crimes and human rights violations from a distance. Now, with new skills learned from the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center and the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), the refugees are using social media, satellite imagery and other tools to collect evidence that may someday be used in international prosecutions.

"There are so many stories on the ground back in Sudan that need work from us as investigators," said refugee Nadia Bela Al-Ahmed, a journalist from Sudan's Darfur region. "We must work so that there can be justice … and from that, there can be a victory for the victims. We can work to be a voice for the marginalized, for the people who have no voice."

All of the Sudanese trainees were already working as journalists or on human rights initiatives before violence drove them from the country, said Maggie Andresen, a trainer for the Human Rights Center who co-led the Berkeley team in Uganda.

"We have such an opportunity with these courageous monitors to collect and preserve and analyze this information for future use in courts, whether it be national courts or through universal jurisdiction, or otherwise to bring it to these accountability processes," Andresen said. "That's really exciting - building these teams, we can push the envelope on accountability and on seeking justice in Sudanese communities."

The Human Rights Center, based at the UC Berkeley School of Law, has established global influence in the use of open-source investigative methodologies for human rights investigations. The methods can be as simple as combing social media or search engines employed with very precise search terms, or as advanced as analyzing satellite imagery and GPS data.

The Center has become such an authority in the field that in 2020 they partnered with the United Nations to co-publish a global protocol on digital open-source investigations, officially published in all the languages of the United Nations in 2024. The protocol outlines the first widely-adopted standards for discovery, verification, collection and preservation of content depicting possible war crimes or other human rights violations so that it can be used in future accountability processes, Andresen said.

Strong training, remarkable courage

Since 2020, ICTJ has worked with Sudanese advocates, lawyers, journalists and victims' groups to shape transitional justice processes - judicial and non-judicial initiatives that address a legacy of massive and serious human rights violations.

ICTJ learned of Berkeley's expertise a few years ago, and the two organizations have built an ambitious partnership. They've trained monitors from Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and, most recently, Sudan.

"The training in Kampala was excellent," said Ilaria Martorelli, ICTJ's program head for Sudan. "But what the Sudanese may make of the information that they receive is equally impressive. They are highly aware of the importance of these tools, and they put them to use right away. So it's a combination of the quality of the training, but also the caliber of participants and their courage."

The Sudan conflict broke out on April 15, 2023, almost exactly three years ago. Experts say the full toll since then is almost impossible to assess. By some calculations, as many as 400,000 Sudanese people have been killed, and perhaps 13 million displaced. Famine is widespread. The United Nations has estimated that some 30 million people need humanitarian assistance.

In the early weeks of the conflict, most of the Sudanese activists had been working in their home country, focused on the fighting and on rights violations, said Yasir Masoud, a senior ICTJ consultant.

"During this war, they became a target for the warring parties," said Masoud. "So all of them - I can say 90%, if not 99% of the activists - are now out of Sudan. They felt unsafe in their lives. And now the only way for them to document what is going on on the ground is with the open sources."

El Fasher is one of the largest cities in the Darfur region, and in late October 2025, Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) turned it into a gruesome scene of mass murder and mass rape, wrecked bridges and ruined crops. The devastation of El Fasher and its people cast a dark shadow as the training convened early last November in Uganda.

In addition to the Sudanese refugees and the staff from ICTJ and Berkeley, past trainees from Yemen, Libya and Tunisia were brought in to share their experience with the Sudanese monitors.

Shocking violence, reams of evidence

In a world that seems engulfed in turmoil, the horrors of Sudan barely registered in U.S. news outlets. But for those convening in Uganda, El Fasher was an immediate reminder of the magnitude of the crimes - and how important open-source materials would be in understanding the carnage and assigning responsibility.

For example, Martorelli said, the RSF perpetrators often posted videos of shocking violence to social media, to amplify their campaign of terror.

"Those images provided a lot of information," she explained, "not only on what the perpetrators were doing or saying, but also through careful observation of the position of a shadow, a uniform insignia, the brand of a car, the color of the sand. All of this provided critical information to understand what was going on, and who might be responsible."

Satellite images, too, were enormously important.

"From these images," Martorelli said, "one could monitor the extent of destruction. There were pools of blood that one could see from satellites. One could also see the wall that was built around El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, to maintain the siege. In this way, much of what was happening was visible and this provided crucial insights to document the violations that were taking place."

Officials from ICTJ and the Berkeley Human Rights Center say the evidence could be critical for future prosecutions of war criminals, reparations for victims, truth-seeking initiatives and a variety of other transitional justice processes for communities ravaged by political violence or genocide.

Preparing for peace - and justice

The training also focused on less tangible skills: Confronted by the graphic evidence of human depravity, how do rights monitors avoid being overwhelmed? How do they stay strong?

Community-building is an essential part of resilience, Andresen noted, especially for sustaining the work long term. After the training, several of the Sudanese monitors said that building networks with fellow citizens and with other monitors from the Middle East and North Africa region helped reassure them that they are not working alone.

Workshop participants also engaged in a module on trauma and resilience, and a psychologist was present during the workshop to speak with those needing professional support.

After the training was complete, Mozamel Belgali Mohammed, a Sudanese lawyer and human rights advocate, told the organizers that the event was vitally important for the future of his nation.

"We in Sudan are going through a catastrophe, a crisis that could be the crisis of the century," Mohammed said. "Grave human rights violations, civilians killed, horrific violations on all levels.

"In the coming periods, God willing, if peace comes, if a democratic transition comes, we can, through the information and skills we've acquired, employ this training in how we truly document and monitor these violations and conduct good investigations. This is so they are preserved and archived in our records until peace comes, and we can seek to use them for transitional justice."

Both Martorelli and Masoud reported that in the weeks after the training, the Sudanese monitors were diligently applying their new skills.

"Clearly, the group that was trained is very active," Martorelli said. "They're making good use of the tools that they've learned. And they have the resolve and the determination to take this work to a level where it can truly make an impact."

LEARN MORE:

• The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley Law offers training courses and workshops on digital open source investigations to rights researchers, lawyers, analysts, investigators and journalists worldwide.