UK Foreign Office responds to Gargash’s denial of UAE arming Sudan’s RSF

The UK Foreign Office has described the findings of a United Nations report on El Fasher as “truly shocking”, particularly its documentation of systematic starvation, torture, killings, rape and deliberate ethnic targeting at the height of the siege imposed by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The response came after UAE Minister of State Anwar Gargash claimed that remarks made by the British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper during the Munich Security Conference last Saturday had refuted allegations that the United Arab Emirates was supplying weapons to the RSF. 

The foreign office instead called for an end to the flow of arms into Sudan.

In a statement by Yvette Cooper, the office said: “We urgently need an end to arms flows. Reports into breaches of the arms embargo which we agree should be extended and enforced, must be investigated. The obstructions to the Fact-Finding Mission from both warring parties are shameful and unacceptable – the UN needs unimpeded access to bring atrocities and breaches to account.”

“The UK called for this report to be commissioned by the UN in November to hold perpetrators of these vile atrocities to account, and today I will take its conclusions to the chamber of the Security Council and ensure that the voices of women of Sudan who have endured so much are heard by the world,” the statement said.

According to the foreign office, the UN report describes the most unimaginable and chilling horrors – including people forced to choose between starvation or eating animal feed, children subjected to mass rape, civilians ambushed and slaughtered as they fled the sieged city, patients and staff killed in their hospital, perpetrators boasting of mass crimes on social media, and calling for “extermination”.        

READ: Al-Burhan: No truce in Sudan unless RSF withdraw from occupied areas