Geneva does not often speak with one voice, but the special session on Sudan produced something close to unanimity. After months of grim reports from El Fasher, killings, rapes, bodies left uncollected, the Human Rights Council moved to establish a fact-finding mission with a mandate broader and blunter than usual.

The fall of El Fasher to the RSF in October marked a turning point in a war already swollen with atrocities. What followed has been described by officials as a campaign designed less to win territory than to terrorise the population that remains. Witnesses speak of university halls turned into execution sites, of trenches dug for mass graves, of families fleeing under drone fire. Volker Türk, the UN’s human-rights chief, addressed the Council with unusual severity.

Too often, he said, governments stage concern without action. His warning extended beyond Darfur. Violence is rising in Kordofan, a region whose strategic location between army- and RSF-held areas makes it particularly vulnerable to siege tactics. The new mission’s task will not be small.

It must document crimes in areas where access is perilous, gather evidence from survivors scattered across borders, and produce findings that carry legal weight. Whether any of this can alter the trajectory of the war is unclear. Humanitarian agencies remain blocked from reaching trapped civilians.

The RSF, flushed with territorial gains, appears confident.

The army, pushed eastward, is fighting with its back against political collapse.

Still, even symbolic measures matter. For victims in Sudan, international silence has often been the most corrosive cruelty.

A formal investigation will not halt the violence, but it does signal that the world, however belatedly, is watching and that the record of what has happened will not be lost to the dust of ruined cities.