What is the RSF?

Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, explained: the foreign-backed militia behind the massacres in Sudan, its Janjaweed origins, who funds it, and the crimes it has been found to have committed.

This explainer examines the Rapid Support Forces (RSF): where the group came from, who funds it, what it has done in Sudan, and why a civilian-led coalition is calling for it to be designated a terrorist organization. Every claim below links to a sourced case file or a named external report.

What is the RSF?

The Rapid Support Forces are a paramilitary force: an organized armed group that operates like an army but sits outside a state's regular military chain of command. In Sudan, the RSF is not a rebel movement that emerged from the population; it is a militia that grew out of the government's own security apparatus and is led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ("Hemedti"), who served as Sudan's deputy head of state before the current war.

Independent bodies describe the RSF as a serial perpetrator of atrocities. The European Union Agency for Asylum records that the RSF "committed widespread human rights violations including extrajudicial killings of civilians, execution of war prisoners, torture, forced disappearance, and ethnic targeting of non-Arab groups, especially in Darfur." Encyclopaedia Britannica likewise documents that "the RSF frequently committed war crimes and crimes against humanity," displacing entire villages, destroying food and water sources, and carrying out extrajudicial executions.

Where did the RSF come from?

The RSF's roots lie in the Janjaweed, the Arab militias the Sudanese government armed to crush a rebellion in Darfur in the 2000s, a campaign the United States and others recognized as genocide. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum records that "soon after the [current] war began, the RSF and their allied militias reignited a brutal campaign of identity-based violence across Darfur," targeting the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit communities.

Those militias were reorganized into the Rapid Support Forces in 2013 under Hemedti and folded into Sudan's security structures. For a decade the RSF and the regular army were uneasy partners; together they helped topple long-ruling president Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The partnership held until a power struggle over integrating the RSF into the national army erupted into open war on 15 April 2023, as the BBC's guide to the conflict explains. According to Human Rights Watch, the war has since driven roughly 12.9 million people from their homes: one of the largest displacement crises in the world.

Who backs and funds the RSF?

The RSF is not a poor insurgency, and its war has been sustained by outside support. In a May 2026 investigation, Human Rights Watch documented the United Arab Emirates' role in backing the RSF and in the deployment of Colombian mercenaries who fought alongside RSF units around El Fasher. HRW investigators placed white-uniformed men they identified as Colombian military contractors at the scene of the execution of disabled civilians; at least 300 Colombian fighters were deployed alongside the RSF. This foreign support (money, weapons, and hired soldiers) is central to how a former desert militia became capable of besieging and capturing major cities. The full account is in our case file on the UAE's backing and the Colombian fighters at El Fasher.

The RSF's leadership has shown little interest in governing the territory it seizes. As the analysis "Rule by Militia" puts it, "the RSF has no plan for governance in Sudan... it wishes to be the rentier elite, not transform the system": a militia organized around extraction and control rather than statehood.

What crimes has the RSF committed?

The record against the RSF is extensive and documented by the UN, human rights organizations, and international newsrooms. Among the best-evidenced cases:

  • The El Fasher massacre (October 2025): After an 18-month siege, the RSF captured the North Darfur capital and, in the first three days alone, the UN Human Rights Office documented more than 6,000 people killed, including some 500 shot at a single university dormitory. See our case file on the El Fasher massacre.
  • The El Geneina genocide (2023): An independent inquiry led by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights concluded that the RSF and allied militias committed genocide against the Masalit, citing 10,000-15,000 people killed in the West Darfur city. See our case file on the genocide against the Masalit in El Geneina.
  • The assault on Zamzam camp (April 2025): Amnesty International documented RSF fighters overrunning one of Sudan's largest displacement camps and killing families in their makeshift shelters. See our case file on the Zamzam camp assault.
  • Sexual violence as a weapon of war: Amnesty International's report "They Raped All of Us" and other investigations record rape used systematically against women and girls across Sudan. See our case file on sexual violence as a weapon of war.
  • Starvation and siege: The Council on Foreign Relations reported that Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab found the RSF "intentionally razed" dozens of farming communities near El Fasher, deliberately gutting food production. See our case file on starvation used as a weapon.

In February 2026, the UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan concluded that the killings and destruction in and around El Fasher bore "the hallmarks of genocide" and formed a planned, organized operation, corroborated by satellite evidence of mass graves analyzed by Yale researchers. Our archive documents the UN genocide finding in full.

Is the RSF designated a terrorist organization?

This is where the record is honest but incomplete. The atrocities have been formally recognized at the highest levels: on 7 January 2025 the United States determined that the RSF and allied militias had committed genocide in Sudan and imposed sanctions on Hemedti, and in February 2026 UN investigators reached their own genocide finding for El Fasher, as reported by the BBC and UN News.

But a genocide determination and targeted sanctions are not the same as a formal terrorist designation of the RSF as an organization. No state has yet designated the Rapid Support Forces a terrorist organization; that is precisely the demand of this campaign. A designation would cut off financing, restrict arms transfers, and put commanders on notice that these acts carry consequences.

What can I do?

The single most effective thing you can do takes about thirty seconds: send a pre-drafted email to your government demanding that the RSF be designated a terrorist organization. No account is required and nothing is stored. If you want to see the evidence first, the full archive of documented case files lays out what the RSF has done, with sources and dates for every claim.

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