The warring Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have newly acquired modern foreign-made weapons and military equipment, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says in a report released today.
These findings, the HRW reports says, demonstrate both the inadequacy of the current Darfur-only embargo and the grave risks posed by the acquisition of new weapons by the warring parties. Consequently, HRW now wants the UN Security Council to renew and expand the arms embargo and its restrictions to all of Sudan and hold violators to account.
“The Security Council should expand the Darfur arms embargo to all of
Sudan to curb the flow of arms that may be used to commit war crimes,”
the report quotes Senior Crisis, Conflict, and Arms Researcher at HRW, Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, saying.
“The Security Council should publicly condemn individual governments that are violating the existing arms embargo on Darfur and take urgently needed measures to sanction individuals and
entities that are violating the embargo,” Gallopin is quoted.
The researcher is further quoted describing the Sudan conflict as one of the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights crises.
Both the warring parties, Gallopin is quoted, were committing atrocities with
impunity, and the newly acquired weapons and equipment were likely to be used
in the commission of further crimes.
“Fighters from both the SAF and the RSF have since mid-2023 posted photos and videos of new foreign-made kit, such as armed drones and anti-tank guided missiles,” Gallopin is quoted saying.
The HRW report is based on the analysis of 49 photos and videos, most apparently filmed by fighters from both sides, posted on the social media platforms Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and X, showing weapons used or captured in the conflict.
HRW says the new visual evidence suggests that the warring parties acquired some of these weapons and equipment after the start of the current conflict in April 2023. In one case, lot numbers indicate the ammunition was manufactured in 2023.
It identifies the new equipment as including armed drones, drone jammers, anti-tank guided missiles, truck-mounted multi-barrel rocket launchers, and mortar munitions, produced by companies registered in China, Iran, Russia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
HRW was, however, not able to establish how the warring parties acquired the new equipment, the report says.
The conflict that began in April 2023 has claimed thousands of civilians and rendered millions others internally displaced, with equally huge numbers forced across the borders as refugees. Both the internally displaced and the refugees were in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
The UN Security Council is expected to decide on September 11 whether to renew the Sudan sanctions regime, which prohibits the transfer of military equipment to the Darfur region. The sanctions regime was established in 2004, when Darfur was the epicenter of a conflict with widespread human rights abuses, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. Since April 2023, the new conflict has affected most of Sudan, but Security Council members have yet to take steps to expand the arms embargo.
The Sudanese government has opposed an expansion of the arms embargo and in recent months has lobbied members of the Security Council to end the sanctions and remove the Darfur embargo altogether.