NEW YORK CITY: Sudan’s permanent representative to the UN called on the international community to put “immense pressure” on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, open legal proceedings against the militia, and formally designate it a terrorist organization.
It comes as the group masses for a new offensive in its civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces, and UN agencies warn that parts of the country could soon be engulfed by famine.
The world must “exert immense pressure on the RSF militia to dissuade them from attacking civilians using top-notch drones supplied by UAE,” the ambassador, Harith Idriss Alharith Mohammed, told Arab News.
“The UAE continues to target our people, supplying the militia with various types of weaponry and inciting neighboring countries to permit attacks launched from their territories.”
He described these attacks as a direct threat to civilian safety and infrastructure across Sudan.
The envoy also urged world powers “to kick-start legal processes to hold (the RSF) accountable for their atrocities and genocide, (and) to designate the militia as a terrorist group that gratifies systematic killing of civilians.”
His appeal comes more than three years into a war that has devastated Sudan since it began in April 2023, when rivalry between the army, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as “Hemedti,” erupted into open combat in Khartoum and spread nationwide.
Between 59,000 and 150,000 civilians are believed to have been killed during the conflict, and 40,000 injured. The UN estimates 13.6 million people have been driven from their homes — about 9.3 million who are displaced inside Sudan and 4.3 million who fled to other countries — making it the largest displacement crisis on the planet.
Mohammed said the RSF were now preparing for a large-scale assault on El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state. They have massed thousands of fighters and mercenaries, he added, reinforced by hundreds of Emirati-supplied armored and four-wheel-drive vehicles routed through southern Libya, Nyala airport in South Darfur, and the Adre border crossing from Chad, with forces positioned in Al-Khuway, Sodari, and to the north and west of Al-Farshaya.
Drone activity, launched from airfields in Nyala and the Ethiopian city of Bahir Dar, has surged, Mohammed said, hitting electricity grids, health facilities, and fuel and food supplies in what he described as a deliberate strategy to starve and displace the population and clear the way for the resettlement of foreign nationals.
Describing the magnitude of the campaign, he said there were more than 124 RSF drone attacks on towns, power grids and hospitals between January and June alone, in which thousands of civilians were killed.
His warnings came as the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme issued a fresh alert on Wednesday naming Sudan among the world’s most critical hunger hot spots through November.
An estimated 19.5 million people, 41 percent of the population, faced crisis-level acute food insecurity or worse through May, including 5 million already in emergency conditions, with the number facing catastrophic, famine-like conditions projected to rise to 200,000 across 15 areas between now and September.
