Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) has called on United Nations member states to impose an immediate arms embargo on the United Arab Emirates, arguing that its aid to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) makes it complicit in atrocities that UN investigations conclude amount to genocide.
The appeal demands that the UN General Assembly convene an emergency session, and comes a week after a UN fact-finding mission for Sudan warned that abuses of humanitarian law and attacks on critical infrastructure unfolding in el-Obeid echo the assault on el-Fasher.
“The international community still has a window of opportunity to prevent further atrocity crimes,” expert mission member Mona Rishmawi said. “El Obeid must not become the next crime scene.”
Dawn cites a UN panel of experts that mapped UAE-linked supply corridors funnelling weapons, vehicles, and fuel across the borders of Chad and Libya into Sudan. It additionally cites Amnesty International’s analyses of the RSF’s utilisation of UAE-made armoured personnel carriers and UAE re-exports of Chinese Norinco ordnance, including GB50A guided bombs and 155mm AH-4 howitzers.
“The evidence of [the] UAE’s support for abusive actors in Sudan is overwhelming,” said Omar Shakir, Dawn’s executive director. “The UAE is the principal external sponsor of a force that a UN fact-finding mission has found committed acts of genocide. No legal framework, international or domestic, can justify continued arms transfers to the UAE.”
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Sudan’s war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces broke out on 15 April 2023. The conflict has killed tens of thousands over the past three years, displaced more than 13 million, and driven more than 19.5 million people to the brink of famine.
Regarding the call for an embargo over support for the RSF, the Emirati foreign ministry told Middle East Eye in a statement that “The UAE has not provided and is not providing military or financial support to any warring party in Sudan.”
The RSF has historically denied receiving support from the UAE.
Not just the UAE
Dawn’s call is chiefly rooted in both international and domestic law.
‘At least respect your own domestic law that prohibits supporting genocide’
– Raed Jarrar, Dawn
Using Article 16 of the International Law Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility, Dawn establishes that the UAE shares responsibility for acts of genocide in Sudan, a standard the International Court of Justice applied to complicity in genocide in Bosnia v Serbia (2007), and which Article III(e) of the Genocide Convention deems a punishable act.
But the onus does not rest solely on Abu Dhabi. States that continue arming the UAE, conscious that its weapons may be used by the RSF, risk incurring the same complicity.
Dawn wrote to five governments that are well positioned to stifle the UAE’s arms supplies: the US, which provides 54 percent of its arms; France, which provides 13 percent, the United Kingdom and China, whose components and re-exported munitions are often found in the RSF’s hands; and Italy, which in 2021 revoked missile and bomb licences to the UAE under its own arms export law.
It called on all five to halt arms transfers, re-export authorisations, and for security cooperation with the UAE, so long as it aids and abets grave abuses, and urged the four permanent members of the UN Security Council to fulfil their legal duties.
Dawn will meet with each government in Washington to continue its campaign for the rule of law and an arms embargo on the UAE.
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Dawn is also pressing the UN General Assembly for a Uniting for Peace procedure to pass a resolution declaring the UAE’s conduct a violation of the UN Charter, the Arms Trade Treaty, and the Darfur arms embargo.
In addition, it asks that the UN Security Council refer the situation in Sudan to the International Criminal Court and expand the Darfur arms embargo to all of Sudan, with explicit reference to external state enablers.
“We understand that we live in a world where the rule of law has been eroded and international law has been disregarded,” Raed Jarrar, advocacy director of Dawn, told MEE.
Speaking to the governments that could enact the embargo, he continued: “At least respect your own domestic law that prohibits supporting genocide.”
Washington’s contradictions
Dawn also demands that the US Congress pass S.J.Res. 51, 52, and 54, joint resolutions of disapproval, which would block pending US arms sales to the UAE, and the Stand Up for Sudan Act, which would bar US arms sales to the UAE until it ends its support for the RSF.
The call addresses the need for closure to the Arms Export Control Act emergency-waiver loophole, so the executive cannot bypass the standard congressional review process to push weapons sales.
The timeline in Washington, DC, should be frictionless, as former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January of 2025 announced that a genocide had been taking place in Sudan, perpetrated by the RSF, and their leader, Mohammad Hamdan Dagalo Mousa, also known as Hemedti.
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The dilemma lies in the military partnership between the UAE and the US. On 10 July, the US Department of Commerce elevated the UAE’s status under the Export Administration Regulations, easing export controls on weapons, commercial satellites, and spacecraft.
Jarrar said the US would be making a mistake if it didn’t take legal steps.
“The government is going to be embarrassing itself by making a declaration about the RSF committing genocide in Sudan, and then, at the same time, continuing to support the main backer of genocide,” Jarrar said.
The Trump administration has recently said that it is initiating a campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court “brick-by-brick”, a move being seen as retaliation against the court’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
MEE contacted the Sudanese Permanent Mission to the UN and the UNGA president’s office, but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.
The office of the spokesperson for the UN secretary general noted that the secretary general has been very vocal in denouncing foreign interference in the ongoing violent conflict in Sudan. The UN’s 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee declined to comment for this story.
Dawn was founded by Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for Middle East Eye and the Washington Post who was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018.
