The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 19 February 2026.
Statement by The Rt Hon Yvette Cooper, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, at the UN Security Council meeting on Sudan.
Two weeks ago, I stood in Adré, on the Chad-Sudan border.
A camp of over 140,000 people who have fled Sudan’s conflict – and 85% of them are women and children. Women I met who are teachers, nurses, students, small businesswomen, market traders, mothers back home but whose lives and whose families are ripped apart,
I spoke to a mother who didn’t know whether her children are still alive.
A Sudanese young woman told me that most women she knew had experienced what she termed ‘bad violence’ that no one wanted to talk about it because of the shame.
A Sudanese community worker told me she thought more than half of the women had been subjected to sexual violence. And other community workers who have told yet more distressing stories one about three sisters arriving at the Sudanese Emergency Response Room facility who had all been raped. The oldest sister was 13. The youngest was 8.
There is a war being waged on the bodies of women and girls, and I told the women that I spoke to in Adre that I would bring their voices and their stories to the United Nations and to the world and that is what we are doing today because the world must hear the voices of the women of Sudan, and not the military men perpetuating this conflict.
Voices that ensure this Council confronts the bitter truth, because the world has been catastrophically failing the people of Sudan.
This is the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century.
A war that has left 33 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, 14 million people forced to flee their homes, famine stalking millions of malnourished children and a conflict that embedded in vested interests and regional rivalries with implications that go far beyond Sudan’s borders.
Yet too often the world has looked away. We must shine a spotlight on the suffering in Sudan. And that is why in the Human Rights Council in November the UK led work across countries to commission the fact-finding mission into El Fasher and the siege and capture of the city the RSF, and that report is now published today. That report is now published today and I am bringing its evidence and conclusions before this Security Council. Page after page of the most distressing accounts imaginable. It is horrific.
Quotes which say:
“Survivors consistently spoke of widespread killings, including indiscriminate shootings and point-blank executions of civilians in homes, streets, open areas or while attempting to flee the city.”
“A pregnant woman was asked how far she was in her pregnancy. When she responded, “seven months”, he fired seven bullets into her abdomen, killing her”.
“Hospitals, medical personnel, the sick and wounded were not spared.”
“And survivors reported being raped in front of their relatives, including their children.”
“Ethnic targeting.”
And calls for, as it says, “extermination.”
So why are we here, in this Council, when we see a report concluding that the violence bears “the hallmarks of genocide.”
This Council, whose mandate and purpose is to confront such shocking crimes and to drive action.
Because El Fasher should have been a turning point. Instead, the violence is now continuing.
More than three months after the fall of El-Fasher, we continue to hear and see reports of continued violations of international humanitarian law or human rights abuses unfolding.
Aid agencies still facing barriers to getting in, schools, hospitals, markets and humanitarian convoys being destroyed.
Four attacks on the World Food Programme since the start of this month alone. There have been reports of strikes on aid operations by both RSF and SAF and the real risk of further escalation now across Sudan and beyond as fighting spreads to the Kordofan regions.
This is not just a humanitarian crisis, it is a regional security crisis and a migration crisis too.
We have seen the impact for regional security on neighbouring countries and on the whole of the Horn of Africa and along the Sahel, opportunities for extremists to exploit and terror groups to take hold. And millions displaced from their homes, the risk of increased migration destabilising nations nearby but also across and into Europe as well.
This affects all of us.
And that is why we need action and we need the United Nations to be a force for countries to come together from across the world to demand peace.
First it means demanding unimpeded humanitarian access and far greater humanitarian support, protection for civilians and for aid workers. Both warring parties must lift the restrictions on aid.
The UN 2026 appeal is just 13 per cent funded — leaving frontline agencies without the funding they need to save lives.
The UK is the third largest Sudan donor, providing $200 million dollars this year, plus $54 million dollars for Sudanese refugees. And in Chad, I announced a further $27 million dollars to support survivors of sexual violence. But aid alone won’t stop this.
We need an immediate humanitarian truce and a pathway to a permanent ceasefire, so I commend the work of the US and President Trump’s Special Advisor who has convened the Quad of nations with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to discuss plans for peace, and the commitment from the Quintet, from the African union, and the European Union and others to support plans for peace.
But we will need pressure from every UN member state, and I urge all of those with influence on both the RSF and the SAF not to fuel further conflict but instead to exert maximum pressure on them to halt the bloodshed, to pull back and to pursue a plan for peace.
A plan which includes rebuilding Sudanese civil society, supporting civil society groups and a civilian transition because it should be the people of Sudan who determine Sudan’s future.
And that means we also need an end to the arms flows.
There is no military solution to this conflict, but the reason that the military men still convince themselves there is a military solution is because they can still obtain ever more lethal weapons. External support from at least a dozen states funding, manufacturing, transit, training that is perpetuating the conflict and the misery.
The Fact-Finding Mission has said that it will report back further on investigations into breaches of the UN arms embargo into Darfur, but arms restrictions need to be enforced and extended, so again I appeal to all nations – now is the time to choke off the arms flows and exert tangible pressure for peace.
And we need accountability, it is time for more sanctions against the perpetrators of these vile crimes. The UK has already sanctioned several senior RSF commanders linked to the atrocities committed in El Fasher.
And this week we joined the US and France in proposing they be designated by the UN Security Council too. We are confronting impunity by supporting the ICC’s Sudan investigation so we can bring perpetrators to justice.
Last September at the UN General Assembly the energy and determination in this Security Council but right across the UN around the peace process for Gaza, rightly, was immense. We could see and feel countries across the world coming together – countries who normally disagree coming together– to back a peace process. That is what made it possible for the US-led plan to deliver a ceasefire within weeks
We need that same energy and determination we have rightly brought to the peace process for Gaza now to bring peace for Sudan, so that we can secure an immediate ceasefire, humanitarian truce and so that those responsible for atrocities are held to account.
Let this be the time that world comes together to end the cycle of bloodshed and to pursue a path to peace.
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