Silent Crimes: Atrocities in Sudan and the International Response | Panel
Center for African Studies
Center for Human Rights and International Justice
Middle Eastern Studies Forum
615 Crothers Way, Stanford, CA 94305
123

This panel brings to light the hidden and often overlooked atrocities unfolding in Sudan amid the violent clash between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese military. The discussion will address widespread ethnic cleansing, mass rapes, and other grave human rights violations. Featuring African Studies scholar Christopher Tounsel, who will provide a scholarly analysis on the issue’s historical context, and Laetitia Bader, the Horn of Africa Director from Human Rights Watch—part of the team that recently issued a comprehensive report on these abuses—the panel will explore the complexities of documenting such crimes and the international community’s ongoing silence, as well as the potential for the right response. Join us as we confront these unseen crimes and the ongoing humanitarian crisis they continue to fuel.
Panelists:
Christopher Tounsel is an historian of modern Sudan, with special focus on race and religion as political technologies. His first book, Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan, published with Duke University Press in 2021, explores the ways that Southern Sudanese intellectuals used Judeo-Christian Scriptures to frame their revolutionary work against the Sudanese state. His second book, Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity (Cornell University Press, 2024)unpacks the vacillating approaches that African Americans have taken to the Sudanese state and its multiethnic populace through periods defined by colonialism, postcolonial civil wars, genocide in Darfur, and South Sudanese independence. Dr. Tounsel's articles have appeared in journals including the Journal of Religious History, Journal of African American History, Journal of Eastern African Studies, and Journal of Africana Religions.
In addition to his research, Professor Tounsel has provided commentary on current events in Sudan and South Sudan for outlets including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Human Rights Watch, and NPR's Throughline.
Laetitia Bader Laetitia Bader is a deputy director in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch supervising the work on the Horn of Africa and the Sudans. She has worked for over a decade at the organization, where she has investigated conflict related abuses, including abuses against children, internally displaced persons in Somalia and sexual exploitation and abuse by the AU peacesupport forces there, and focused on issues of political repression, including mistreatment of political detainees, and in recent years supported conflict related work on both Sudan and Ethiopia. Before joining Human Rights Watch she worked on the rights of human rights defenders in the East and Horn of Africa region and worked at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Uganda. She holds a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Sciences-Po in Paris, specializing in human rights, and holds a bachelor’s in history from University College London (UCL). She is bilingual in French and English, and speaks Italian.