Sudan has filed a case against the United Arab Emirates at the World Court for allegedly violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention by arming the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the International Court of Justice said on Thursday.
Sudanese officials have frequently accused the UAE of supporting the RSF, the government’s rivals in an almost two-year-old civil war, charges the UAE denies but UN experts and US lawmakers have found credible.
At the ICJ, Sudan alleges the RSF committed “genocide, murder, theft of property, rape, forcible displacement, trespassing, vandalism of public properties, and violation of human rights,” according to a statement by the ICJ, also known as the World Court.
“According to Sudan, all such acts have been ‘perpetrated and enabled by the direct support given to the rebel RSF militia and related militia groups by the United Arab Emirates,'” it said.
The United Arab Emirates said it would seek immediate dismissal of the case, which it said lacked “any legal or factual basis,” a UAE official said in a statement to Reuters.
The charges are in connection with intense ethnic-based attacks by the RSF and allied Arab militias against the non-Arab Masalit tribe in 2023 in West Darfur, documented in detail by Reuters. Those attacks were determined to be genocide by the United States in January.
