February 10, 2025 (ADDIS ABABA) – The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) is still waiting for visas from authorities in Port Sudan to allow a fact-finding mission to investigate human rights abuses in Sudan, Commissioner Hatem Essaiem, Chairperson of the Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan, said on Monday.
The ACHPR decided on June 3 to send a fact-finding mission to Sudan to investigate human rights violations and breaches of humanitarian law since the conflict erupted on April 15, 2023.
“The mission has been waiting for visas for some time now,” Commissioner Essaiem said in a video addressed to a civil society consultative meeting on Sudan in Addis Ababa.
He stressed the need to pressure the authorities in Port Sudan to grant access to the areas where violations occurred so that the mission could collect testimonies and evidence.
“If we want to go to Sudan, the African Union charters require us to obtain permits from governments, and this is a body we must go through to meet the victims,” Essaiem said.
“If it is impossible to obtain that approval, we will move to Sudan’s neighbouring countries to listen to the victims,” he added.
He also said the mission had faced financial difficulties but had recently overcome them, adding that it is now studying all issues related to all violations in Sudan.
Essaiem said he was supposed to join the International Commission of Inquiry but was prevented from doing so by diplomatic and bureaucratic circumstances. He added that he had held personal meetings with commission members, the last of which was in January, to exchange information.
“We are in contact with the committee in Geneva and hope to travel as a delegation from the African Union and the United Nations to Sudan,” he said.
The commissioner stressed that diplomatic channels and coordination with the Sudanese embassy are used to contact the two warring parties in Sudan.
He said he would visit Addis Ababa to coordinate the Sudan visit file with the ambassadors in the Ethiopian capital and complete arrangements for meetings in Addis Ababa, including with the African Union Commission.
The Tunisian diplomat said the commission of inquiry works on two levels, one in the field in Sudan and neighbouring countries and the other electronically.
He noted that the mission will listen to all the victims it can reach, pointing out that victims outside the country have greater freedom of expression.
Essaiem called on civil society organizations to help victims reach the mission, communicate with it, and create links and communication so that it can record these testimonies, stressing the need to provide protection for the mission to do its work.