Kristof is on Chad-Sudan border: Shame of hunger belongs to those who are powerful, well fed and blind

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: Longtime American columnist and Sudan watcher Nicholas Kristof is back in the saddle on the Chad-Sudan border. 

Kristof is a great storyteller who never lets a few facts get in his way. In his article below, he says a US partner, the UAE, supplies weapons to RSF militia in Sudan but omits to say the US is one of the leading arms traders to UAE. 

Trouble is, eye popping online news tends to spread quickly around the world and is viewed as fact before the truth has had time to get its boots on.

If Nicholas says (he doesn't) 150,000 died in Sudan and others say 15-23K, so be it. Readers of his news in New York Times assume NYT news is true.

In June, UN stated 15,500 fatalities reported in 1,400 incidents targeting civilians; 9.5M displaced – 7.3M internally, 1.9M in neighbouring countries.

This month, ACLED says "since fighting first broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April 2023, ACLED records over 7,623 events of political violence and more than 23,105 reported fatalities in Sudan. On 5 September 2024, ACLED released corrections to the Sudan data that updated events with fatalities in West Darfur state, as reported by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its published report titled ‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan. The new information from HRW resulted in ACLED recording 2,635 additional fatalities in West Darfur during the period of April to November 2023. For more on how ACLED incorporated the information from the HRW report, see this update in the ACLED Knowledge Base".

So, Nicholas is back on the scene. Hold onto your hats Messrs Burhan and Hemeti. Longtime Sudan watchers are alive and well. Vive la révolution! 

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From The New York Times

OPINION editorial by By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist, reporting from the Chad/Sudan border

Dated 18 September 2024. Here is a full copy, for the record and posterity:

I Just Went to Darfur. Here Is What Shattered Me.

Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

When an Arab militia rampaged through Maryam Suleiman’s village in the Darfur region of Sudan last year and lined up men and boys to massacre, the gunmen were blunt about their purpose.

“We don’t want to see any Black people,” a militia leader said, adding mockingly: “We don’t even want to see black trash bags.” To make his point, Maryam recalled, he shot a donkey because it was black.

Then the militia members executed men and boys who belonged to Black African ethnic groups, she said. 

“They shot my five brothers, one after the other,” Maryam told me, describing how her youngest brother survived the first bullet and called out to her. Then a militia member shot him in the head and sneeringly asked her what she thought of that.

The militia tried to systematically kill all the males over 10, Maryam said, and also killed some younger ones. A 1-day-old boy was thrown to the ground and killed, and one male infant was thrown into a pond to drown, she said.

The gunmen then rounded up the women and girls in a corral to rape, she added. “They raped many, many girls,” she recalled. One man tried to rape Maryam, she said, and when he failed he beat her. She was pregnant and suffered a miscarriage.

“You’re slaves,” Maryam quoted the militia members as saying. “There is no place for you Black people in Sudan.” So Maryam fled to neighboring Chad and is one of more than 10 million Sudanese who have been forcibly displaced since a civil war began last year in the country and ignited pogroms against Black African ethnic groups like hers.

Maryam Suleiman wept as she recounted how a militia in Sudan attacked her village and killed her five brothers. Photo Credit: Nicholas Kristof

The atrocities underway near here are an echo of the Darfur genocide of two decades ago, with the additional complication of famine. But there’s a crucial difference: At that time, world leaders, celebrities and university students vigorously protested the slaughter and joined forces to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Today, in contrast, the world is distracted and silent. So the impunity is allowing violence to go unchecked, which, in turn, is producing what may become the worst famine in half a century or more.

“It’s beyond anything we’ve ever seen,” Cindy McCain, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, told me. “It’s catastrophic.”

“Unless,” she added, “we can get our job done.”

World leaders will convene next week in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly, but they have been mostly indifferent and are unlikely to get the job done. What’s needed is far greater pressure to end the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rival Arab militia, while pushing the warring parties to allow humanitarian access. All sides in the war are behaving irresponsibly, so more than half the people of Sudan — 25 million people — have become acutely malnourished already. A famine was formally declared in one area in Sudan in the summer.

WATCH VIDEO 2:18

Nicholas Kristof on the Silent Famine in Darfur

This is what I witnessed — and it shattered me.

Timmo Gaasbeek, a disaster expert who has modeled the crisis for a research institute in the Netherlands, told me that he foresees 13 million people starving to death in Sudan by October 2025, with a margin of error of two million. Such a toll would make this one of the worst famines in world history and the worst since the great Chinese famine of 65 years ago. By way of contrast, the famous Ukraine famine of the 1930s killed perhaps four million people, although estimates vary.

I can’t verify that a cataclysm of that level is approaching. Warring parties blocked me from entering Sudanese areas they controlled, so I reported along the Chad-Sudan border. Arriving refugees described starvation but not yet mass mortality from malnutrition.

All I can say is that whether or not a cataclysmic famine is probable, it is a significant risk. Those in danger are people like Thuraya Muhammad, a slight 17-year-old orphan who told me how her world unraveled when the Rapid Support Forces, the same group that killed Maryam’s five brothers, attacked her village and began burning homes and shooting men and boys.

“So many men were killed, like grains of sand,” she told me.

When Thuraya Muhammad, an orphan because of Sudan’s war, doesn’t have enough food to feed her younger sister and brother, she gives them water to fill their stomachs. Photo Credit: Nicholas Kristof

After slaughtering the men in Thuraya’s village, the militia raped many women and girls, she said. Thuraya’s cousin, a woman of 20, was among those kidnapped by the militia and hasn’t been seen since, she added.

Thuraya’s father was murdered by the militia and her mother had died earlier, so at 16 she was now the head of the household. She led her younger brother and two younger sisters to safety by walking to the Chadian border town of Adré. Gunmen tried to rob them several times, but the family had nothing left to steal.

Now in a refugee camp in Chad, Thuraya works to feed her siblings. Like other refugees, she gets a monthly food allotment from the World Food Program that helps but is insufficient. She supports her family by seeking day jobs washing clothes or cleaning houses (for about 25 cents a day). When she finds work, she and her siblings eat; if not, they may go hungry.

When I dropped by their hut, Thuraya had been unable to find work that day. A friendly neighbor had given her a cup of coffee, but she hadn’t eaten anything since the previous day — and there was no prospect of dinner, either. If there is no food, Thuraya told me, she serves water to her siblings in place of dinner.

She wept.

Thuraya wasn’t crying from her own pangs of hunger. Rather, tears tumbled silently down her cheeks out of shame at her inability to feed her brother and sisters.

“When there isn’t enough food, I give it to my sisters and brother,” she told me, and her younger sister Fatima confirmed that. “I go hungry, or else my neighbors may call me over to eat with them.”

“I’d rather my sisters and brother eat, because they cry when they go hungry,” she said. “And I can’t bear to hear them cry.”

Fatima resists the favoritism and tries to give her sister back some food. But Thuraya won’t take it and goes out, telling her brother and sisters to eat while she finds something for herself. They all know that in a refugee camp of about 200,000 hungry people, she will find nothing.

I’m hoping that Thuraya’s fortitude might inspire President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with world leaders gathering at the United Nations, to summon a similar resolve to tackle slaughter and starvation in Sudan. Donor nations have contributed less than half the sum needed by U.N. agencies to ease Sudan’s food crisis, and they have not insisted forcefully on either providing humanitarian access or on cutting off the flow of weapons that sustains the war.

Biden, who 20 years ago savaged President George W. Bush for not doing enough to stop the Darfur genocide, has provided aid and appointed a special envoy to push for peace talks but has said little about the current crisis. An American partner, the United Arab Emirates, supplies weapons to the militia that slaughtered and raped Thuraya’s neighbors, yet Biden has not publicly demanded that the Emirates cut off that support for killers and rapists.

The upshot of this neglect is the risk not only of a horrendous famine but also of endless war, Sudan’s fragmentation, enormous refugee flows and instability across the region.

So as world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly tuck into fine banquets next week to celebrate their humanitarianism, may they be awakened by thoughts of an orphan of Darfur who ignores her own hunger and divides scraps of bread among her brother and sisters.

Thuraya has no reason to feel ashamed that her siblings are hungry; the shame belongs to those who are powerful, well fed and blind.

What question do you have about the civil war in Sudan and the people affected by it? What more would you like to know? Submit your question or critique in the field below and Nicholas Kristof will try to respond to a selection of queries in a future installment in this series.

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Chad and Sudan? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

View original (currently a free gift unlocked article): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/opinion/darfur-sudan-famine.html

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The US is one of the leading arms traders to the UAE. Sudan's VP defends refusal to join US-led peace talks

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: Wars are started and prolonged for money and profit. The US is >$35 trillion in debt and makes and sells arms to reduce its debt. In my view, wherever there is war the US seems to be in the thick of it or in the background in the guise of fighting for freedom and democracy.

Here is an 11-minute video report by PBS News Sep 3, 2024 titled ‘Sudanese teachers and shopkeepers join the fight against rebels in nation’s civil war’. Note that at 4:35 it says: “The United States is one of the leading arms traders to the UAE”.

Video and transcript: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/sudanese-teachers-and-shopkeepers-join-the-fight-against-rebels-in-nations-civil-war

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Related reports

From PBS News - August 16, 2024

Video and transcript 

‘Amid brutal civil war, Sudan’s VP defends refusal to participate in U.S.-led peace talks’

This week, the United States attempted peace talks in Geneva, but the Sudanese armed forces refused to attend. With the support of the Pulitzer Center, special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen discussed the war with Sudanese Vice President Malik Agar.

Full story: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/amid-brutal-civil-war-sudans-vp-defends-refusal-to-participate-in-u-s-led-peace-talks

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From Amnesty International - July 25, 2024

‘Sudan: Constant flow of arms fuelling relentless civilian suffering in conflict – new investigation’

The conflict in Sudan is being fuelled by a constant flow of weapons into the country, Amnesty International said today in a new briefing. The briefing, New Weapons Fuelling the Sudan Conflict, documents how recently manufactured foreign weapons have been transferred into and around Sudan, often in flagrant breach of the existing Darfur arms embargo.

Amnesty International found that recently manufactured or recently transferred weapons and ammunition from countries including China, Russia, Serbia, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen are being imported in large quantities into Sudan, and then in some cases diverted into Darfur.

Full story: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/sudan-constant-flow-of-arms-fuelling-relentless-civilian-suffering-in-conflict-new-investigation/

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Save Darfur. Save Sudan. Conflict and Humanitarian Emergency in Sudan: An Urgent Call to Action.

US Department of State Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on Sudan today, Wednesday, May 1 2024. Click here to watch it on video. 

This is a copy of the statement of U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello:

Statement of
Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello
U.S. Department of State
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
“Conflict and Humanitarian Emergency in Sudan: An Urgent Call to Action” 

May 1, 2024

Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Risch, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the horrific crisis in Sudan. I also want to thank this Committee for your untiring and vital advocacy for the people of Sudan over many years, and particularly since this tragic war began last April.

As this Committee well knows, the war and humanitarian crisis in Sudan are already catastrophic. Worse yet, the most likely trajectory forward is towards famine, fighting that takes on increasingly ethnic and regional aspects, and the possibility of a failed state of 50 million people on the strategic eastern gateway to the Sahel. For the past year, the people of Sudan have suffered death, crimes against humanity, sexual violence and starvation as a weapon of war, and ethnic cleansing. More than 8 million Sudanese people have been displaced– more than if every resident of Maryland and Idaho combined was forced from their homes, 3 million children – approximately one in eight children – have fled violence since mid-April, making it the world’s largest child displacement crisis. 25 million people are in need of basic food and medicine with 4.9 million of those people on the verge of famine. This brutal war is having a disproportionate impact on women and girls, who both parties have subjected to ongoing atrocities, including rape and conflict-related sexual violence.

The scale of the suffering is shocking. Beyond each of those statistics are human beings, like the woman I met who had recently escaped Darfur. She described the horrors committed against her by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and then being re-traumatized when she got to a neighboring country. Sadly this is all too common. Yet the world has treated Sudan as an invisible crisis, rarely covered in the world press. While much of the world turns a blind eye to this crisis, the Sudanese that I’ve met – including women and youth - have let me know how much they notice the statements and speeches Chairman Cardin and Ranking Member Risch have made. I appreciate that Senator Booker led a recent delegation to witness first-hand the scale and stark conditions of refugees flooding into Chad from Darfur. When these women and children – too many with bone-thin arms and thousand-yard stares – were asked at the border why they had fled, the answer repeatedly was simple – “food.”

Food insecurity and malnutrition have reached alarming levels across Sudan, driven by conflict and blockage of humanitarian aid. Nearly 18 million people in Sudan faced acute food insecurity, with nearly 5 million people on the brink of famine. According to the latest data from February, nearly 3 million children in Sudan are acutely malnourished. A woman carrying her baby of 7 months said to me, “this Ramadan, we’ve had more iftars with no food than with food.”. Absent a change in humanitarian access and flow of aid, conditions are expected to worsen with the imminent arrival of the ‘lean season’ which lasts through the summer. Sudan is on the verge of famine, due to blatant and systematic violations by both SAF and RSF of international humanitarian law. Amidst this fragility, the SAF made the unconscionable decision earlier this year to block, disrupt, and limit humanitarian aid in a way that has made it impossible to meet the scale and urgency of hunger facing the Sudanese people.

But even in areas without major limits on humanitarian access, like the refugee camps in Chad, resources have fallen painfully short. The World Food Program (WFP) had cut daily rations to 30 percent below recommended levels in case no new funding arrived. For this reason, the decision of this Congress to pass supplemental humanitarian funding earlier this month was truly a lifesaving decision for many Sudanese. The United States has now committed over $1 billion in food, medicine, and other humanitarian aid since the war began, and I hope that the media will let more Americans see how their generosity is helping some of the world’s most vulnerable people. However, much work remains to mitigate famine, including pressure to translate donor pledges into results on the ground and escalating pressure on both the SAF and RSF to allow unconditional, safe and sustained cross border and crossline delivery of aid in accordance with international humanitarian law.

While humanitarian aid is vital, the hundreds of Sudanese with whom I have met have spoken with one voice on this fact – the only true solution to the humanitarian crisis and human suffering is to end this war, and that is my top priority as the U.S. Special Envoy. While two armed factions launched this conflict, this is less a civil war between two sides than a war which two generals and their affiliates are waging against the Sudanese people and their aspirations to a free and democratic future. Let’s be clear: the RSF and its leadership are rooted in the Janjaweed militias who committed genocide and widespread crimes against humanity. They have conducted this war with unspeakable brutality, including through ethnic cleansing of the Masalit, sexual violence as a weapon of war, and torching whole villages. Any external actor providing support to the RSF cannot claim ignorance of its past or on-going atrocities.

In December, Secretary Blinken determined that the SAF and the RSF have committed war crimes, and that the RSF and allied militia have also committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The SAF bombed civilian areas, and now proactively interferes with humanitarian operations, repeatedly refusing the flow of lifesaving food and medicine in direct violation of international humanitarian law. The Biden Administration has also issued OFAC sanctions against SAF and RSF targets, as well as entities responsible for supporting these violations.

In a moment, I’ll share why I believe that a peace deal could be on the horizon, but first, let me be crystal clear that there is undeniable momentum now for this crisis to get much worse. A two-sided war is in danger of factionalizing, with more ethnic militias moving from neutrality to combatants. Many of these groups have populations that overlap with neighboring countries, increasing the chances of this becoming a regional war. We see credible reports about the growing number of negative actors, including Islamists and former regime officials, and a rise in hate speech and polarization. The current battle over El Fasher in North Darfur could eliminate one of the last semi- safe civilian havens in western Sudan and produce a flood of new refugees. The possibility of famine and a fractured state is real, and we are communicating that with urgency from the highest levels of our government to those who have leverage to end this war. As Secretary Blinken said in his April 13 video message to the Sudanese people, “more fighting cannot, and will not, end this conflict.”

Let me summarize three of our lines of effort focused on ending the war.

We have elevated and focused U.S. leadership on Sudan across the inter-agency. This has included repeated engagement by Secretary Blinken, and tremendous support from the Department’s

African and Near Eastern affairs bureaus, and tireless support from our Embassies for a ten-week sprint of shuttle diplomacy. We have also seen Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield publicly and consistently pursue Sudan as one of her top three priorities and push the United Nations Security Council to call for a Ramadan ceasefire. The U.S. Department of Treasury is playing a crucial role on expanding sanctions and ensuring consequences for those committing atrocities and spoiling the peace, including through the imposition of sanctions against perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict, implementing the Presidential Memorandum to Promote Accountability for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. USAID, along with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), has been a key partner in tenaciously advocating for humanitarian access, aiding Sudanese pro-democracy and civil society groups to continue organizing in their communities, and supporting courageous youth who continue to find innovative ways to deliver food and medicine at great risk.

Second, we have focused our strategy on building and aligning sufficient political will in the region to compel a peace deal consistent with the aspirations of the Sudanese people. Over recent months, we have made clear to regional and European counterparts that Sudan now represents not only a humanitarian and human rights crisis but also a threat to regional and Europe’s stability. We expect all actors, even those previously playing a negative role, to now be partners in a peace deal to prioritize stability over a failed state that would have consequences for the broader region for a decade or more. This is reflected by – but not limited to – a commitment to new peace talks in the coming weeks. These talks will be (1) inclusive of key African and Arab regional leaders, (2) focused on aligning external political will, and (3) designed to produce a comprehensive cessation of hostilities. We expect all partners, even those who have previously fueled the conflict, to understand that the United States government now expects them to be partners in peace.

While this revised formulation of the Jeddah platform represents our best opportunity for formal talks, I have been clear publicly and privately that we are not waiting for Jeddah talks to resume to negotiate an end to this war. We are actively engaged in it every day, with every meeting and every signal sent. In this effort, I want to thank so many of our African partners, the United Nations, and the African Union who are leading efforts to create greater global consensus and urgency for compelling a deal.

Third, we are continuing to raise the costs of those conducting and fueling this war. We are engaged directly with both fighting factions, including their top generals, to deter escalation and atrocities. We have led the world on sanctioning bad actors – both individuals and entities like banks that are enabling the atrocities – and have made clear our readiness to expand those sanctioned.

Finally, the greatest source of hope is the resilience and unity of the Sudanese people, and we continue to center and amplify their call not just for peace but for the restoration of their shared aspirations for a democratic future. They are united in wanting the war to end, full access to humanitarian aid, and a unified professional army under the authority of a civilian government. They do not want to see former corrupt regime officials or extremists use this war as a backdoor to power. In short, they want their future back – the future they so courageously began with the

overthrow of the authoritarian Bashir regime. That is the North Star of our policy - standing with the Sudanese people.

As we speak, Sudan faces two distinct but accelerating trajectories– one towards famine and possibly a failed state, and the second towards peace and a democratic future. The only two barriers to ending this war are, first, the political will of two Generals and those fueling this horrific war, and second the absence of enough political will by those of us who could compel a peace. Our North Star is the aspirations of the Sudanese people. Our path is building and aligning enough will in the region to silence the guns and restore the Constitutional transition. That path can be paved, but time is very much not on our side.

In closing, let me express my appreciation to this Committee for your support for the people of Sudan, for the mandate of the Special Envoy, and the light you shine on the crisis in Sudan. 

The Honorable Tom Perriello

U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan

U.S. Department of State

Washington, D.C.

DOWNLOAD TESTIMONY

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Sudan: UN Security Council Private Meeting 29 Apr

Report from United Nations

Security Council Report (SCR)

What’s In Blue

Dated Sunday, 28 April 2024 - here is a full copy:

Sudan: Private Meeting

Tomorrow morning (29 April), the Security Council will convene for a private meeting to discuss the security and humanitarian situations in Sudan. Malta, April’s Council president, scheduled the meeting following bilateral consultations with some Council members and the parties concerned. Assistant Secretary-General for Africa in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA-DPO) Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee and Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Joyce Msuya are expected to brief. Sudan is expected to participate under rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure.

Tomorrow’s meeting comes against the backdrop of a severe escalation of violence across several parts of Sudan, particularly in the city of El-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur state. One year into the conflict that erupted on 15 April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s military leader, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemeti), the fighting continues to have devastating consequences for civilians. As at 14 April, more than 15,500 people had reportedly been killed since the onset of the conflict, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a non-governmental organisation that collects conflict-related data.

In 2023, the RSF made significant advances, taking control of parts of Darfur, Khartoum, and Kordofan. El-Fasher remains the only capital city in the Darfur region outside the RSF’s control. The final report of the Panel of Experts assisting the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee, dated 15 January, noted that amidst initial violence in April 2023 local authorities in El-Fasher had brokered a ceasefire agreement, dividing the city between the SAF, the RSF, and the armed movements in Darfur, which are signatories to the Juba Peace Agreement. This arrangement allowed the SAF and the RSF to maintain positions on the west and east sides of the city, respectively, with a central area designated as a buffer zone under the control of the joint force of the armed movements. Recently, the joint force reportedly renounced its neutrality in the conflict and pledged support to the SAF, apparently citing the RSF’s provocations, including attacks on its positions and threats to block humanitarian aid, as the reasons for its decision.

In recent days, several UN officials have raised the alarm about the potential outbreak of full-scale fighting in El-Fasher and the resulting humanitarian consequences. In a 13 April statement, Secretary-General António Guterres expressed concern about escalating tensions between armed actors in El-Fasher, noting that an attack on the city “would be devastating for civilians…and could lead to an expansion of the conflict along intercommunal lines across the five Darfur states”. He reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire and a durable cessation of hostilities. He also called on the warring parties to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law to protect civilians and facilitate full and unrestricted humanitarian access to all areas in need.

On 19 April, Council members met to discuss the situation in Sudan, at the request of the UK, the penholder on Sudan. In her remarks, Msuya said that on 13 April, following weeks of rising tensions and airstrikes, RSF-affiliated militias attacked and burned villages west of El-Fasher. Since then, she added, there have been continuing reports of clashes in the eastern and northern parts of the city. She further noted that the continuing violence poses an extreme and immediate danger to the 800,000 civilians residing in the city and risks triggering further violence in other parts of Darfur—where more than nine million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. At the same meeting, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo informed the members that in the north of El-Fasher, clashes had erupted between the RSF and SAF-aligned members of the joint force in the district of Mellit. She added that “fighting in El-Fasher could unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur…[and] would also further impede the delivery of humanitarian assistance in an area already on the brink of famine”. (For background and more information, see our 19 April What’s in Blue story.)

At tomorrow’s meeting, Msuya is expected to provide an update on the humanitarian situation in the region in light of the evolving security developments. A 26 April OCHA press release said that the security situation has effectively cut off humanitarian access to El-Fasher—which serves as an important hub for reaching other parts of Darfur, including for aid shipments through the Tine border crossing from Chad and from Port Sudan. It added that more than a dozen trucks with lifesaving supplies for 122,000 people remain stranded in Ad Dabbah in the Northern state, due to persisting insecurity and lack of guarantees for safe passage.

On 27 April, Council members issued a press statement, co-authored by the UK and members of “A3 plus one” grouping (Algeria, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Guyana). The statement expressed concern about the escalating tensions and military operations around El-Fasher. Members called on the SAF and RSF to end the build-up of military forces, take steps to de-escalate the situation and comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law. They reiterated their call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, leading to a sustainable ceasefire. In addition, they urged all member states to “refrain from external interference which seeks to foment conflict and instability and instead to support efforts for a durable peace” and reminded the Sudanese warring parties and all member states to comply with the arms embargo obligations, imposed by resolution 1556 of 30 July 2004 and most recently renewed by resolution 2676 of 8 March 2023. Several members are expected to reiterate these points at tomorrow’s meeting.

Another key issue that is likely to feature in tomorrow’s discussion is the flow of arms into Sudan in violation of the arms embargo. The 15 January final report of the Panel of Experts indicated that since the onset of the conflict, the RSF had been able to secure new supply lines to and through Darfur for weapons, vehicles, and logistics, including through eastern Chad, Libya and South Sudan. The report noted that the accusations levelled by the SAF that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Chad had provided military support to the RSF through Amdjarass were found credible. Furthermore, the report found that, from July 2023 onwards, “the RSF deployed several types of heavy and/or sophisticated weapons including Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs), howitzers, multiple-rocket launchers and anti-aircraft weapons such as MANPADS [Man-Portable Air Defence Systems]”, which had a massive impact on the balance of forces, both in Darfur and other regions of Sudan—in violation of the arms embargo.

Today (28 April), Sudan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed, apparently sent a letter to the Council claiming that the UAE’s support to the RSF represents a “flagrant violation” of the UN Charter and the Sudan sanctions regime. The letter requested the Council to convene an emergency meeting to discuss the “UAE’s aggression against Sudan…[and] hold it responsible for the crimes committed against the Sudanese people”. The UAE has denied these allegations on several occasions, most recently in a 21 April letter addressed to the Council, which said that “[a]ll allegations of the United Arab Emirates’ involvement in any form of aggression or destabilization in Sudan, or its provision of any military, logistical, financial or political support to any faction in Sudan, are spurious, unfounded, and lack any credible evidence to support them”.

Tags: Insights on Africa, Sudan, Sudan (Darfur)

About What's In Blue

When the Security Council approaches the final stage of negotiating a draft resolution, the text is printed in blue. What's In Blue is a series of insights on evolving Security Council actions designed to help interested UN readers keep up with what might soon be "in blue".

View original: 

https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2024/04/sudan-private-meeting.php

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SUDAN WATCH UPDATE on Mon 29 Apr 2024 22:39 GMT: The above report, originally entitled Sudan: Private Meeting has been retitled and updated by What's In Blue as follows:

Sudan: Closed Consultations*

*Post-script (29 April, 9:50 am EST): After the story’s publication, the format of the meeting was changed from private meeting to closed consultations. An earlier version of the story indicated that Sudan will participate in the meeting under rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure. After the changing of the meeting’s format this was no longer possible, as closed consultations do not allow participation of non-Council member states. The story was amended to reflect these changes.

View original: 

https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2024/04/sudan-private-meeting.php

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