The Sudanese Alliance for Rights (SAR) welcomes the Lighthouse Reports investigation, “The Kanabi Killings,” which exposes the large-scale and systematic violence perpetrated against Al-Kanabi communities in Al Jazira State. The investigation, co-published with CNN, Trouw and Sudan War Monitor, sheds crucial light on how the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and allied militias have carried out ethnic-based attacks on civilians, including mass killings, destruction of homes and villages, and the dumping of bodies in canals and mass graves. It draws on satellite imagery, verified videos, survivor testimonies, and whistleblower accounts to reveal the human cost of this violence against largely non-Arab, Black Sudanese communities known as the Kanabi.
This investigation affirms and amplifies SAR’s own findings published earlier this year in a report; Voices from the Margins: The Struggle of Al-Kanabi Communities in Sudan, which documented grave and widespread violations following the Sudanese army’s entry into Al Jazira State.
SAR’s research, conducted between October 2024 and January 2025, established that the takeover of Al Jazira State by the Sudanese army and allied militias marked a sharp escalation in violence against Al-Kanabi communities, who have long endured discrimination, denial of citizenship rights, and social exclusion. The report documented patterns of ethnically targeted killings, mass arrests, forced displacement, village burnings, and systematic looting of livestock and property, particularly affecting civilians from marginalised ethnic and tribal backgrounds in Umm Al-Qura locality, Greater Wad Madani, South Al Jazira, and Al-Hasaheisa locality.
SAR’s findings further revealed that hate speech incited by community leaders, government officials, and military personnel has legitimised and fuelled violence against Al-Kanabi communities, while authorities in Port Sudan have remained silent and complicit in the face of these crimes.
These acts constitute serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), particularly the rights to life, dignity, and security of person; the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit attacks on civilians and the destruction of civilian property; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including prohibitions against extrajudicial killings, torture, and arbitrary detention; the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which guarantees equality, non-discrimination, and the right to life; and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, given the systematic and ethnically targeted nature of the violence documented.
The Lighthouse Report is especially significant at a time when the humanitarian crisis in Sudan has reached devastating levels and when the voices of survivors are too often ignored. By documenting these atrocities, Lighthouse Reports has made an invaluable contribution to global understanding of the conflict and the urgent need for accountability, justice and protection for civilians.
SAR commends the investigative journalists and Sudanese human rights organisations whose work has ensured that the cries of the Al-Kanabi people do not go unheard. Their courage and persistence are vital in documenting abuses, countering denial, and laying the groundwork for accountability.
The Sudanese Alliance for Rights calls for urgent, independent investigations, protection for survivors and witnesses, and full accountability for all perpetrators of crimes against civilians in Al Jazira State. Justice for the Al-Kanabi communities can no longer be postponed.
Sudanese Alliance for Rights(SAR)
16 December 2025.
