New Delhi, July 4 -- The power station is gone. The fuel depots are gone. In el-Obeid, the capital of Sudan's North Kordofan state, water has been running short for weeks across a city of 500,000 residents and the 100,000 war-displaced people sheltering among them. On Friday, the United Nations' most senior human rights official stood before the world's permanent human rights body and delivered an assessment that left almost no room for misinterpretation. "This is not a drill," Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the council. "It is a red alert that needs to land on the desks of heads of state and government around the world."

a city under sustained pressure from the Rapid Support Forces, its civilian infrastruct...