Sudan tells top UN court UAE is breaching genocide convention by funding rebels

Sudan told the United Nations' top court on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates is breaching the genocide convention by arming and funding the rebel paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, in a case vigorously contested by the UAE.

The northeast African country is asking the International Court of Justice to issue emergency orders, known as provisional measures, including telling the UAE to do all it can to prevent the killing and other crimes targeting the Masalit people during Sudan's two-year civil war.

"The genocide against the Masalit is being carried out by the Rapid Support Force, believed to be Arab from Darfur, with the support and complicity of the United Arab Emirates," acting Justice Minister Muawia Osman said in his opening statements at The Hague-based court.

In a briefing ahead of the hearing, a top official at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs told journalists the case was baseless. "This is not a legitimate legal action; it is a cynical and baseless PR stunt, designed to distract from the Sudanese Armed Forces' own appalling record of atrocities," Reem Ketait said.

Ketait will make arguments on behalf of her country later on Thursday afternoon.

Both Sudan and the UAE are signatories to the 1948 genocide convention. The United Arab Emirates, however, has a caveat to part of the treaty which legal experts say makes it unlikely that the case will proceed.

"The ICJ has previously said that this kind of reservation is allowed and is a barrier to a case going forward. The court is most likely to say the same thing in this case, meaning that this case will not go forward," Melanie O'Brien, an associate professor of international law at the University of Western Australia and an expert on the Genocide Convention, told The Associated Press.

Sudan descended into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary rebels broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions.

Both the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces have been accused of abuses.

The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and a U.S. ally, has been repeatedly accused of arming the RSF, something it has strenuously denied despite evidence to the contrary.

Conflict Observatory, a monitoring group which is funded by the U.S. State Department and has been monitoring the war in Sudan, has identified aircraft it says carried UAE arms transfers to the RSF. Those flights went through Maréchal Idriss Deby international airport in Amdjarass, Chad. The UAE says the purpose of the flights was to support a local hospital.

In January, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, also known as Hemedti, had been targeted for sanctions along with seven RSF-owned companies in the United Arab Emirates, including one handling gold likely smuggled out of Sudan. That came as the U.S. declared the RSF rebels are committing genocide.

The war has killed more than 24,000 people and driven over 14 million people — about 30% of the population — from their homes, according to the United Nations. An estimated 3.2 million Sudanese have escaped to neighboring countries.

The Sudanese Armed Forces have broadly retaken Khartoum from the RSF. Last month, the military said it had recaptured Khartoum's international airport.