Amnesty urges UN to expand Sudan arms embargo

KHARTOUM – Amnesty International on Thursday called for a UN-imposed arms embargo on Sudan to replace the existing Darfur-focused ban, accusing states and companies of fueling a 15-month war with weapons supplies.

The rights group said in a report that the conflict between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was being fueled by “an almost unimpeded supply of weapons” into the country.

Recent arms transfers from Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Serbia, Yemen, and China were being used on the battlefield, Amnesty said.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people, according to various estimates, and displaced millions, creating the world’s worst displacement crisis, the United Nations says.

“There are hundreds of thousands of weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition going into Sudan,” fueling mass human rights abuses, Amnesty’s head of crisis research, Brian Castner, said.

The existing embargo, in place since 2004, is “too narrowly focused” and “too poorly implemented” to curb weapons flows, the report said.

Amnesty urged the UN Security Council to expand the embargo to all of Sudan and strengthen its monitoring.

“All states and corporate actors must immediately cease supplies of all arms and ammunition to Sudan,” Amnesty’s senior director for Regional Human Rights Impact, Deprose Muchena, said.

Both sides in the conflict have been accused of war crimes, including attacks on civilians, indiscriminate shelling, and blocking aid.

Doctors Without Borders said on Monday that 53% of thousands of war-wounded treated at one of its main hospitals in Khartoum suffered gunshot wounds.