AFRICA/SUDAN - Arms embargo for Darfur extended: extension to the whole country necessary

Thursday, 12 September 2024 weapons un civil war

SUDAN

2024-11-14
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2024-10-28
The plane that crashed in Darfur was operating on behalf of the Sudanese army

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The shooting down of a cargo plane sheds light on the international alliances that fuel the war

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"The war in Sudan receives little attention, but the suffering it causes is no less"

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Fighting continues in Khartoum: 23 civilians killed in attack on a market

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Army offensive in Khartoum in the grip of intense fighting

Khartoum (Agenzia Fides) - The arms embargo for Darfur has been extended, but must now be applied to the whole of Sudan. Yesterday, September 11, the 15 members of the UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the arms embargo imposed in 2004 on the western Sudanese region of Darfur for another year, until September 12, 2025. The embargo was decided at the time after Arab Janjaweed militias close to the government carried out massacres against the non-Arab population of Darfur.
Over the years, the Janjaweed were absorbed into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo, one of the two actors in the war that broke out on April 15, 2023, when the RSF clashed with the regular Sudanese Army (SAF) commanded by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan.
The RSF captured a large part of Darfur, which is why the Sudanese ambassador to the UN insisted that the Security Council sanction the Rapid Support Forces with targeted measures. International humanitarian organizations, on the other hand, point out that the arms embargo should be extended to the entire territory of Sudan and affect all warring parties in order to end a conflict that has already claimed at least 20,000 lives and left nearly 10 million displaced and refugees, while 25.6 million people are on the brink of acute famine and more than 755,000 people are dangerously close to starvation.
As a recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) documents, the conflict is fueled by a constant influx of weapons from various suppliers (see Fides, 11/9/2024). According to the Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations, this includes the United Arab Emirates, which would supply the RSF with weapons across the border with Chad.
According to the Khartoum representative, the recent reopening of the Adré border crossing by Chad for humanitarian aid (see Fides, 22/8/2024) has also made it possible to supply weapons to the paramilitary forces.
The Sudanese ambassador also stated that, according to reports on a European gold market, the United Arab Emirates is profiting from Sudanese gold mined in Darfur.
The United Arab Emirates representative to the United Nations responded to the accusations of his Sudanese counterpart by saying that it was "a cynical attempt to deflect attention from the failings of the Sudanese Armed Forces" and accused the military in Khartoum of showing "no political courage whatsoever", using hunger as a weapon of war and refusing to respond to calls to end the conflict and sit down at the negotiating table.
"To end this conflict, the SAF must take the vital step of participating in the peace talks and summon the political courage to negotiate with their enemy," he said, referring to the peace talks in Geneva in which the Sudanese military has not yet participated (see Fides, 22/8/2024). (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides, 12/9/2024)