In January 2025, the International Criminal Court investigator announced that he would be seeking arrest warrants over atrocities in Darfur. This crucial step will have a considerable impact on protecting the lives of millions in the region. Taking into account that the RSF militia’s genocides and massacres in the area have been enabled by the direct and unlimited support of the UAE, the court should take the reasonable and just step and open an investigation into the UAE’s role in these ongoing crimes. 

The RSF emerged primarily from the 2013 restructuring of the notorious Janjaweed militia. Its goal was to support the central government’s counterinsurgency operations in Darfur and South Kordofan. In 2017, the Sudanese parliament passed a law legitimizing its activities. Over the years, the RSF militia committed countless crimes and atrocities during the ongoing war, including the destruction of villages, the killing of protesters, sexual violations and rape, mass killings, unlawful detentions, the targeting of hospitals and churches, and attacks on journalists and media institutions, in addition to ethnic-based killings and recruiting children as soldiers during the ongoing war. 

For many years, independent reports have exposed the UAE’s support for the RSF militia with weapons and money, which significantly increased after the outbreak of the war. The UAE is driven by strong economic and political interests in Sudan that it believes will be secured once the militia takes over power. These interests include exploiting gold and agricultural resources, seizing strategic ports in the Red Sea, and preventing the return of Islamists to power. 

Credible and independent reports show the UAE’s support to the RSF militia, for instance, In September 2023, the New York Times exposed that the UAE secretly provided the militia with arms from Chad under the guise of a hospital it established in the east of the country to help Sudanese refugees. In September 2024, the NYT also uncovered the expansion of the UAE’s military support to the militia smuggling weapons and flying drones to Sudan from the same location. The UAE has been reportedly sending Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside the RSF militia in the Darfur region. Amnesty International found that French-manufactured military technology incorporated into armored personnel carriers made by the United Arab Emirates is being used by the RSF militia in the ongoing battlefield in Sudan, marking a clear violation to the UN arms embargo in Darfur. Moreover, the UN panel of experts identified several routes that the UAE uses to supply the militia with arms and weapons. 

The impact of this continuous support resulted in facilitating horrendous crimes committed by the militia. For instance in Darfur, thousands were killed in Ardamata and other areas, women were abducted and raped, and children were piled up and shot. The militia is continuously shelling refugee camps in the region. 

There are grounds to believe that these violations constitute genocides and crimes against humanity, as these killing campaigns are ethnically motivated by the RSF and its allied militia against tribes of African backgrounds. 

While there are no details hitherto about the persons in whom the court is interested, given the direct and pivotal role of the UAE in supporting and funding the military operations of the militia, it is legitimate to include the UAE in any investigation by the ICC court. Such a move should include the UAE president Mohamed Bin Zayed, who is also the supreme commander of the UAE Armed forces, a position that puts him at the top of the chain of command, and other UAE military and intelligence leaders who are potentially responsible for ordering military shipments and those who are engaged in transferring them. 

It is time for the ICC to move expeditiously to hold the UAE accountable for its destructive role in Sudan, and bring truth and justice to their victims.

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