UN Security Council extends arms embargo on Sudan

 

The UN Security Council on Wednesday extended an arms embargo on Sudan's Darfur region for another year, after experts said it had been regularly violated amid the ongoing civil war, including by the United Arab Emirates.

In a resolution adopted unanimously, the Council extended until September 12, 2025, the sanctions regime in place since 2005, which is aimed solely at Darfur.

That includes individual sanctions -- asset freezes and a travel ban -- on three people, and an arms embargo.

The "people of Darfur continue to live in danger and desperation and despair ... This adoption sends an important signal to them that the international community remains focused on their plight," said deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood.

Though sanctions do not apply to the whole country, their renewal "will restrict the movement of arms into Darfur and sanction individuals and entities contributing to or complicit in destabilizing activities in Sudan," he said.

More than 16 months of war between rival Sudanese generals has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered what the United Nations calls the world's worst internal displacement crisis.

The war pits the army under Sudan's de facto leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The UN and humanitarian organizations fear that the war could degenerate into new ethnic violence, particularly in Darfur, already ravaged more than 20 years ago by the scorched-earth policy pursued by the Janjaweed -- Arab militiamen who have since joined the RSF.

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the decision was a "missed opportunity" by the Council to extend the embargo to the whole of Sudan.

China and Russia, permanent members of the Security Council who abstained the last time the embargo was renewed, in 2023, this time voted in favour.

The move "will go some way towards stemming the steady flow of illicit arms into the battlefield and calming down and de-escalating the situation on the ground," said Deputy Chinese Ambassador Dai Bing.

He said the sanctions were "a means, not an end. They must not replace diplomacy."

In their annual report, published in January, experts charged by the Council with monitoring the sanctions regime said the arms embargo had been violated multiple times.

They pointed the finger at several countries, including the UAE, accused of sending arms to the RSF.

Sudanese ambassador Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed said it was "no secret" that the UAE has a "key role" in the fighting, and argued that maintaining the embargo creates "an imbalance between the different forces in Darfur."

His Emirati counterpart rejected the "baseless" accusation, describing it as "a cynical attempt to deflect attention from the failings of the Sudanese armed forces."