Sudan and UAE envoys clash at UN over military interference claims

During a Security Council meeting on Tuesday, Sudan’s UN ambassador verbally attacked the United Arab Emirates, claiming that the Gulf state was inciting strife in his nation. The Emirati envoy categorically denied the accusation.

Sudan accuses UAE of meddling

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, faced up against the regular military in April 2023 as Sudan fell into war. The army has been accusing Abu Dhabi of backing the RSF for months. Sudan asked for an urgent Security Council meeting in April to discuss its claims, but this request was never granted. Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed, the ambassador of Sudan, used Tuesday’s regularly planned discussion on the state of affairs in Sudan as an opportunity to voice his complaints. He stated that the RSF, “supported with weapons by the Emirates,” had been “deliberately and systematically targeting the villages and cities.” “The UAE needs to avoid going to Sudan. 

The first need for security in Sudan is that it must cease its assistance,” he continued, referring to Abu Dhabi’s military and financial backing of the RSF as the “main cause of this drawn-out conflict.” The council, he said, should “speak bravely” and publicly denounce the Emirati administration. A new UN fact-finding team looking into atrocities during Sudan’s bloody civil war said on Tuesday that it was looking into allegations of sexual slavery in detention centers and attacks on people based on their ethnicity.

UAE funding of RSF under fire

According to mission leader Mohammed Chande Othman, the recently formed UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission “received credible reports of many cases of sexual violence being committed by the warring factions” during the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva. “Women and girls have been, and continue to be subjected to rape and gang rape, abduction and forced marriage,” he stated. He stated that “reports of sexual slavery and sexualized torture in detention facilities, including against men and boys,” were being investigated by the team.

Othman also brought attention to claims that youngsters are being recruited on a large scale, even to engage in “direct combat and commit violent crimes”. According to him, the team was especially worried about the intense fighting and the RSF siege around El-Fasher, Sudan, which is the final Darfuri city not in the paramilitary’s control. “Previous attacks on other areas compound our concerns,” he stated, adding that the investigation team was “currently investigating earlier large-scale attacks against civilians based on their ethnicity in other areas of Darfur” .

Sudan-UAE tensions boil over

“Killings, rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, forced displacement, and looting” were among the attacks, he claimed. According to Othman, investigations into “ethnic-based attacks” were also ongoing in other areas, including in Darfur and the Al Jazirah neighborhood of greater Khartoum. In a report published on Wednesday, Amnesty International said that Egypt was gathering up Sudanese refugees in large numbers and deporting them against their will. The organization urged the authorities to halt these “illegal” activities. 

Citing an estimate from the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, Amnesty International claimed in its report that “3,000 people were deported to Sudan from Egypt in September 2023 alone”. Their forcible return to “an active conflict zone without due process or opportunity to claim asylum in flagrant violation of international law” was denounced by the London-based rights group. Sara Hashash, deputy director of Amnesty International for the Middle East and North Africa, said, “It is unfathomable that Sudanese women, men, and children are fleeing the armed conflict in their country… are being rounded up en masse and arbitrarily detained in deplorable and inhumane conditions before being unlawfully deported.”

Diplomatic row at the UN

Since the conflict began in April 2023, the UN estimates that tens of thousands of Sudanese have died and that over nine million have been displaced. Furthermore, it states that around two million people have left Sudan across its borders, with almost half of them going to Egypt. However, Amnesty International believes that the true number is greater since a large number entered the nation illegally when Cairo abruptly decided in June of last year to need entrance permits for all Sudanese citizens. 

Before that change, Sudanese women, men, and children over 50 were granted visa-free entry into Egypt. Several Sudanese refugees were detained while in hospitals and on the streets, “leaving many afraid to leave their homes,” citing their accounts. “Cruel and inhumane” situations were detailed, some of which were informally set up, such as “a horse stable” inside a military base. It cited “overcrowding, lack of access to toilets and sanitation facilities, substandard and insufficient food, and denial of adequate healthcare” within these centers.