Sources on security incidents and civilian casualties

For data on violent incidents, a dataset from the organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) has been used. ACLED is an independent conflict monitoring organisation collecting, analysing and mapping information on crisis and conflict in Africa, south and south-east Asia and Middle East. It provides datasets on conflict incidents, coding each incident with the time and place, type of violent incident, the parties involved and an estimate on the number of fatalities. It also provides relevant breakdowns per region, actor, type of incident, and period. The information is collected in a database that is accessible via registration, searchable and kept continuously up to date. The data primarily comes from secondary sources such as traditional media reports, but also from reports by international institutions and non-governmental organisations, targeted new media platforms, and data provided by local partners of ACLED.4

ACLED records six event types: battles, explosions/remote violence, violence against civilians, protests, riots and strategic developments.5 For the analysis of the security situation in Sudan in this report, only the following type of events have been included: battles, explosions/remote violence and violence against civilians.

ACLED codes security incidents as follows:

• Battles: violent clashes between at least two armed groups. Battles can occur between armed and organised state, non-state, and external groups, and in any combination therein. Sub-events of battles are armed clashes, government regaining territory and non-state actor overtaking territory.

• Violence against civilians: violent events where an organised armed group deliberately inflicts violence upon unarmed non-combatants. It includes violent attacks on unarmed civilians such as sexual violence, attacks, abduction/forced disappearance.

• Explosions/remote violence: events where an explosion, bomb or other explosive device was used to engage in conflict. They include one-sided violent events in which the tool for engaging in conflict creates asymmetry by taking away the ability of the targets to engage or defend themselves and their location. They include air/drone strikes, suicide bombs, shelling/artillery/missile attacks, remote explosives/landmines/IEDs, grenades, chemical weapons.

• Additionally, ACLED codes actors involved in security incidents as follows: Actor1 is the ‘[o]ne of two main actors involved in the event (does not necessarily indicate the aggressor)’ and Actor2 is the ‘[o]ne of two main actors involved in the event (does not necessarily indicate the target or victim)’,6 while ‘[i]n most cases, an event requires two actors, noted in columns ‘Actor 1’ and ‘Actor 2’. ‘However, the ‘Explosions/Remote violence’, ‘Riots’, ‘Protests’, and ‘Strategic developments’ event types can include one-sided events’.7 When focusing on the involvement of specific actors within certain regions, the drafters based their analysis on all those incidents, where ACLED coded the relevant actor either as ‘Actor1’ or as ‘Actor2’. This approach aims to illustrate the general level of involvement of the respective actors in the conflict without distinguishing between Actor1 and Actor2, as these categories, according to ACLED's methodology, do not indicate any differentiation in terms of content/semantics.

Security incidents numbers and associated graphs at country and governorate level are based on an ACLED dataset that is accessible via registration.8 Whenever other sources on security incidents were available over the reference period, ACLED’s data have been corroborated/contrasted with other data.

The graphs on the estimated number of fatalities in Sudan and the regions are also based on ACLED. Where available, information from other sources documenting civilian casualties in Sudan (Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights - OHCHR, Action on Armed Violence – AOAV) has been included.

AOAV – a UK-registered charity organisation that records, investigates, and disseminates evidence of armed violence against civilians worldwide – gathers data from English-language media reports. It ‘does not attempt to comprehensively capture all incidents of explosive violence around the world but to serve as a useful indicator of the scale and pattern of harm’. According to the AOAV’s methodology, an incident is recorded only when at least one casualty resulting from the use of an explosive weapon is reported. Casualties are presumed to be civilians unless otherwise specified or there is an indication that those affected were combatants. AOAV’s methodology is subject to several limitations, including underreporting in certain regions and its reliance on English-language sources.9

Data on civilians killed in Sudan collected by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) are based on information provided by the OHCHR Country Office in Sudan and the Designated Expert on Human Rights in the Sudan of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. This information is obtained through, among other methods, interviews, monitoring missions, and remote monitoring. The information gathered is corroborated by cross-checking it against several independent sources and the ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ standard of proof is applied in the assessment of investigated incidents.10