UN investigators say foreign arms and fighters are fuelling Sudan’s war

UN investigators have said a steady flow of foreign weapons, military technology and fighters is prolonging and intensifying Sudan’s war. They warned that the conflict is spreading geographically and becoming more dangerous for civilians.

Members of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan presented their findings at UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday. They called for stronger international action, including an expansion of the arms embargo.

“Our investigation found reasonable grounds to believe that external transfer of weapons, military technology, logistic support, and foreign personnel continue to sustain and intensify the conflict,” said the mission’s chair, Mohamed Chande Othman.

“We also found that external actors supplied both parties, and this helps sustain their military operations. The result is increasingly visible on the ground,” he said.

Asked who was arming the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Othman said investigators had identified a cross-border network supplying weapons and training foreign fighters.

It involved individuals and entities in Chad, southeast Libya, Somalia’s Puntland region and the United Arab Emirates.

He said the mission was urging those states “to beef up their due diligence obligations”, given the direct consequences for civilians.

Othman stressed that the findings did not, at this stage, implicate the governments themselves.

“We have not yet, in terms of our evidence, linked any of the neighbouring states as states. So, there’s a distinction there: individuals and entities in these states,” he said.

The mission is engaging with the UAE and Chad, he said, and its investigation into the alleged roles of other states is continuing. Chad denies that its territory has been used to supply the warring parties. The UAE has repeatedly denied arming the RSF.

“Destroying a country of 56 million people”

Mission member Mona Rishmawi said both sides and their backers “are basically destroying a country of 56 million people”.

“That’s really important to keep in mind,” she said. She added that a failure to hold perpetrators of past conflicts to account was feeding the current violence.

The mission said civilians in El Obeid, a strategic city in central Sudan, faced grave risks because it remained partially encircled by the RSF.

“The situation in and around El-Obeid remains grave and the risk of atrocities are high,” Othman said.

According to the report, drone strikes attributed to the RSF have damaged schools and displacement sites and cut access to healthcare, electricity and water.

The mission also found that security forces affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces had intensified surveillance and arbitrary arrests, further restricting civilian freedoms.

Othman warned that recent fighting showed the conflict was entering a more dangerous phase.

“The attacks reported in Blue Nile, Abyei and near the Sudan-Egypt border reinforce what we have been warning about for months: the conflict is becoming more geographically extensive, more technologically sophisticated and increasingly dangerous for civilians,” he said.

Calls for a wider arms embargo

The UN Security Council has maintained an arms embargo on Darfur since 2004, but it does not cover the rest of Sudan. The Council declined to extend it in September and again earlier this month.

Asked about those decisions, mission member Joy Ngozi Ezeilo said the report documented how surveillance and arbitrary detention were leaving civil society exposed. She said the mission’s role was to ensure “Sudanese civilians, whether women, children, or the displaced families, are not abandoned”.

“This war, despite being the most atrocious war, is not getting the 'attraction' it is supposed to get. And the international community is not responding in a way it should,” Ezeilo said.

“We are for expansion of this arms embargo,” she added.

The mission also supports extending the International Criminal Court’s mandate to cover all of Sudan. The court’s jurisdiction currently stems from a 2005 Security Council referral limited to Darfur.

The war between the army and the RSF began in April 2023, when a dispute over plans to integrate the two forces escalated into open conflict.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and around 13 million displaced, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises. Famine conditions have spread, and aid agencies say the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate.

The mission’s findings add to pressure on the Security Council, where members remain divided over whether to widen the embargo.

Investigators say their inquiries into foreign involvement are continuing. Further findings could test whether states named in the report take steps to stop weapons and fighters from crossing their territory into Sudan.

Read more:

• UN calls for immediate Sudan ceasefire as drone attacks intensify
• Power cuts and medicine shortages threaten cancer care in Sudan
• Children killed, women at risk as violence escalates in Sudan's Kordofan

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