Full text of ICJ speech accusing UAE of complicity in genocide in Sudan
The International Court of Justice on Thursday began oral hearings in the application by Sudan accusing the United Arab Emirates of breaching the Genocide Convention and requesting interim measures to prevent genocide.
It is a historic precedent for the UN's top court to hear a case against an Arab country for allegedly violating the 1948 treaty, to which both Sudan and the Emirates are parties.
Sudan filed its application on 5 March over the UAE's alleged complicity in acts of genocide against the Masalit community since at least 2023.
In its application, Sudan said that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group and allied militias had perpetrated genocide, murder, theft, rape and forcible displacement, and was "enabled" to do so by direct support from the UAE.
Sudan contended that the Emiratis were "complicit in the genocide on the Masalit through its direction of and provision of extensive financial, political, and military support for the rebel RSF militia".
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In response, the UAE denied the allegations and said the case was a "cynical and baseless PR stunt".
"Since the start of the war, the UAE has not provided any arms or related material to either of the warring parties," Reem Ketait, an official at the UAE foreign ministry, told judges later on Thursday.
"The idea that the UAE is somehow the driver of this reprehensible conflict in Sudan could not be further from the truth," she said.
"There is serious evidence that the UAE is failing to prevent this and is complicit.”
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) April 11, 2025
Sudan on Thursday accused the United Arab Emirates of complicity in genocide at a hearing before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands pic.twitter.com/JDQDxOdA3P
Sudan requested that the world court implement a number of provisional measures, including ordering the UAE to take measures to prevent: the killing and causing serious harm towards the Masalit, deliberately inflicting conditions to bring about the physical destruction of the group, and the imposition of measures that are intended to prevent births within the group.
It also called for provisional measures ordering the UAE to ensure that any armed units supported by it do not carry out or attempt genocidal acts and do not directly or publicly incite to commit genocide.
In the hearing, Eirik Bjorge, a professor of law representing Sudan, presented the oral arguments regarding alleged breaches of the Genocide Convention by the UAE. Lawyers also presented arguments on the court's jurisdiction, which the UAE is disputing.
Below is the full text of Bjorge's speech. Footnotes that accompanied his submission can be found in the court's full public record of the hearings here.
The facts
1. Mr President, Members of the Court, it is an honour to appear before you on behalf of the Sudan to address the facts. As I will explain, including by reference to UN sources, there can be no doubt that the Masalit people is currently being subjected to genocide, and that there is serious evidence that the UAE is failing to prevent this and is complicit. I will also deal very briefly with the existence of the dispute in case the UAE seeks to raise this as a point.
2. It is notorious that, since November 2023, the Masalit non-Arab ethnic group in the Sudan has been targeted and subjected to acts of genocide and other prohibited acts, which continue to this day. The perpetrators of these acts are members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia comprised of Arab Darfuris, led by a former commander of the Janjaweed militia, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
3. The situation was accurately summarised as follows by the current US Secretary of State, the honourable Marco Rubio, during his confirmation hearing before the US Congress in January of this year: “By its very definition, this is a real genocide. This is the ethnic targeting of specific groups for extermination, for elimination, by groups, by the way, that are being funded by nations that we have alliances and partnerships with in other parts of the world, and we should express that clearly. I think - and part of our engagement with the UAE, and it will have to be a pragmatic engagement - I mean, they are important players in what we hope to resolve in the Middle East, and I think as part of that engagement we also need to raise the fact that they are openly supporting an entity that is carrying out a genocide”.
4. Against this backdrop - and in circumstances where the UAE’s open support for the RSF continues notwithstanding the fact that the RSF’s ongoing siege of El Fasher is increasingly at serious risk of culminating in further acts of genocide, and the RSF’s attacks against other gathering places in West and North Darfur for members of the Masalit people who have been displaced by the conflict have also escalated over the past month - the Sudan had no choice but to approach the Court for urgent interim relief.
5. It is important to understand why the current US secretary of state felt able to express the situation in the forthright terms he used.
6. In the spring of 2023, the RSF was increasingly capturing territory in Darfur. During clashes in El Geneina in West Darfur in May-June 2023, the RSF and militias aligned with it carried out “large-scale attacks on civilians, the Masalit population in particular”. They conducted a systematic campaign to extirpate the city’s Masalit community. The massacre by the RSF has been described as “a deluge of atrocities” and a “killing frenzy”. Between 10,000 and 15,000 persons were killed. In this and other atrocities, the RSF has targeted gathering sites for internally displaced persons (IDPs), which have been systematically attacked, burned, and destroyed.
7. In November 2023, the United Nations special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, described the events in West Darfur in the following terms:
“rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including sexual slavery, have been rampantly perpetrated as a weapon of war; entire villages have been burnt, often with the plan to attack announced in advance; derogatory and dehumanizing language - such as 'slaves’ - has been persistently used as an element of incitement to violence; conditions of life have been deprived, with medical facilities and transportation destroyed; and access to water and electricity deliberately obstructed. This all points to risk factors for genocide”.
8. Instrumental to the RSF’s prosecution of its campaign of genocide since June 2023 was its securing of new supply routes for weapons, equipment, and logistics for use in the conflict. As a result, the RSF was now able to use several types of heavy and sophisticated weapons and these played a major role in its capture of El Geneina.
9. In January 2024, the UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts on the Sudan, whose members had been appointed by a composition of the Security Council, which included the UAE itself, reported that the RSF’s main supply route for arms is through eastern Chad, which borders West Darfur.
10. The Panel assessed allegations that “a heavy rotation of cargo planes coming from Abu Dhabi International Airport to Am Djarass airport in eastern Chad . . . transporting weapons, ammunition and medical equipment for [the] RSF”, as well as the UAE’s denial and assertions that its cargo planes had a purely humanitarian purpose. The Panel concluded that the allegations against the UAE were “credible”:
“According to information gathered by the Panel from sources in Chad and Darfur, the allegations were credible. Several sources in eastern Chad and Darfur, including among local native and administrative leaders and armed groups operating in those areas, reported to the Panel that, several times per week, weapons and ammunition shipments were unloaded from cargo planes arriving at Am Djarass airport, then loaded on trucks.”
11. Continuing to seek to operate under the cloak of humanitarianism, the UAE in September 2024 built a field hospital emblazoned with the banner of the Red Crescent next to the Amdjarass airfield. But tellingly, when the Red Cross sought to visit in order to understand what the UAE operation was doing under its protected banner, the officials were turned away for “security reasons”. The assessment of the Sudan’s General Intelligence Service was that
“[t]he unnatural expansion of activity in the Amdjarass Airport facilities, the flights to the airport, and the heavy presence of combat vehicles and military camps are not consistent with the argument that this was for the purpose of providing the needs of the field hospital”.
12. An adviser in the American NGO the Sudan Conflict Observatory, Justin Lynch, put it this way: “[t]here’s no other plausible explanation for these airlifts except for weapons support to the RSF”; “[n]o one is fooled”. Likewise, the Sudanese General Intelligence Service has concluded that the UAE’s field hospital at Amdjarass Airport “is the primary supply and support hub for the enemy”. It has also determined that the UAE is continuing to use N’Djamena airport, in western Chad, for the same purpose.
13. The UAE, for its part, has sought to characterise such conclusions as nothing more than “a duplicitous media disinformation campaign”.
14. Meanwhile, on 22 January 2024, the European Union designated Al Junaid Multi Activities Co. under its Sudan sanctions regime. This Sudanese holding company, which had already been designated under the United Kingdom’s sanctions regime, is owned by Abdul Rahim Dagalo, the brother of General Hamdan, and his two sons. The reasons given by the European Union for the designation included a finding that “[t]he RSF is also using Al Junaid’s gold production and exports to secure military support from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to which most of Sudan’s gold production is smuggled, ... including the provision of weapons used by the RSF in the conflict in Sudan”.
15. On 21 May 2024, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide briefed the Security Council in a meeting where the UAE was invited to participate. She took the occasion at this meeting “to raise the alarm, clearly and unequivocally, about the ongoing situation in the Sudan, which bears all the marks of a risk of genocide, including strong allegations that the crime has already been committed. Civilians are far from being protected, and civilian populations are being targeted based on their identity. In Darfur and El Fasher, civilians are being attacked and killed because of the colour of their skin, their ethnicity and who they are”.
16. The special adviser expressed “extreme concern about the attacks on the ethnic Masalit community in West Darfur, allegedly perpetrated with an explicit intent to destroy” and emphasised that “[t]he human rights and humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the Sudan contravenes the very essence of the international obligations to prevent and punish the crime of crimes, as enshrined by the Genocide Convention . . . The risk of genocide exists in the Sudan. It is real, and it is growing every single day”.
17. On 5 June 2024, the special adviser observed in connection with El Fasher that it was “unquestionable that risk factors and indicators for genocide and related crimes are present, and the risks are increasing”. And, on 20 September 2024, she expressed grave concern over reports that the RSF had breached the third defensive line around El Fasher, with one of El Fasher’s IDP camps, Abu Shouk, “teetering on the edge of disaster”.
18. Further clear evidence of the UAE’s complicity emerged in the aftermath of the battle of Jebel Moya in October 2024. The defeated RSF forces left behind arms that can only have been provided by the UAE, including ammunition crates marked “United Arab Emirates, GHQ Armed Forces, Joint Logistics Command, PO Box. No. 2805, Abu Dhabi, UAE”.
19. Notwithstanding its evident knowledge of the ongoing genocide, the UAE continued to supply heavy weaponry through Amdjarass airport. This included the provision of sophisticated drones that were increasingly flown out of Amdjarass and into the Sudan.
20. Moreover, the UAE has also assisted and aided the RSF in the recruitment of mercenaries to support the attack against El Fasher. On 20 November 2024, a joint military force was engaged in an operation near to where North Darfur borders Libya. After a firefight, the mission was able to collect the passports of certain of the foreign mercenaries. Among them were Colombian nationals whose passports contained entry visas from the UAE from the previous month. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the Colombian mercenaries “were hired . . . by an Abu Dhabi-based company called Global Security Services Group”, which has “presented itself as acting on behalf of the Emirati government”. North African officials interviewed by The Wall Street Journal put the number of Colombian mercenaries who have been sent to the Sudan at approximately 160; a detailed Colombian investigation put it at 300.
21. On 7 January 2025, “after careful review of the facts and a comprehensive legal analysis”, the United States Secretary of State correctly determined that a genocide was being committed in the Sudan, stating that
“[t]he RSF and RSF-aligned militias have continued to direct attacks against civilians. The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys - even infants - on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies. Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan.”
22. On the basis of this determination, the United States sanctioned the RSF’s commander General Hamdan “for his role in systematic atrocities”. It also sanctioned seven companies owned by the RSF, as well as one individual, for their role in procuring weapons for the militia; they were, all of them, based in the UAE .
23. The UAE Ministry of Justice waited for around four months before it responded, on 4 April 2025, only after the Sudan had submitted this dispute to the Court. And even then the UAE used notably circumspect language, asserting that: “[n]one of the seven entities hold an active business license in the UAE, nor are they currently operating in the UAE”.
24. Against this backdrop, as you have seen, the current United States Secretary of State felt compelled, in January 2025, not only to recognise the existence of the ongoing genocide, but also to call out the UAE for its open support of the entity that is carrying out that genocide.
25. Since that date, the plight of the surviving members of the Masalit group in North and West Darfur has only become more desperate. There are thousands of Masalit in North Darfur, particularly in El Fasher and in Zamzam camp, many of them internally displaced.
26. The RSF is currently mobilising even greater forces, and intensifying its attacks, with the aim of breaking the siege of El Fasher, which has been ongoing since May 2024. So important is the taking of El Fasher to the RSF and its sponsor that the UAE is reported, in recent months, to have intensified its efforts of support in order to ensure that El Fasher falls. If that happens, everything points to a repeat of the atrocities of El Geneina.
27. At the same time, the RSF has been attacking gathering sites where there are internally displaced members of the Masalit group, including at Zamzam camp. Between 9 and 13 February 2025, following heavy artillery shelling, the RSF launched a ground assault against the camp and razed its main market in arson attacks. The Humanitarian Research Lab of the Yale School of Public Health confirmed on 13 December 2024 the “large-scale displacement of an unknown number of civilians from Zamzam IDP camp following repeated heavy artillery bombardment over 12 days” by the RSF.
28. It also identified and located four heavy artillery pieces consistent with a type of Chinese-produced 155 mm Howitzer artillery gun - which it considered were engaged in the bombardment of Zamzam. Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab noted, on the basis of publicly available sources, that the UAE was “the only country” known to have purchased this type of howitzer. Notably, the Security Council’s Panel of Experts had reported earlier that the increasingly heavy weaponry provided by the UAE included howitzers and that these had been observed in El Fasher. The assessment of the Sudan is that the howitzers in question - of which there were 11 in total - arrived by UAE aircraft which landed at Amdjarass airport on 1 October 2024 and were transported onwards by truck into Darfur before they were put to use by the RSF.
29. And yet, the nightly weapons and ammunitions flights from the UAE into, inter alia, Amdjarass airfield continue to arrive. Sudan’s own intelligence assessment in March 2025 is that the flights to Chadian airports transporting military aid to the RSF “have continued to the present”.
Conclusion
30. To conclude, there can for present purposes be no question that there is sufficient evidence that the UAE is not only failing to prevent genocide, but is also complicit in genocide. This will, of course, be the subject of full argument at the merits stage, although direct proof will to a large extent continue to rest in the hands of the UAE itself. For present purposes, it is relevant to recall the Court’s observation in Corfu Channel that, in such a situation, “the other State, the victim of a breach of international law”, in this case the Sudan, “should be allowed a more liberal recourse to inferences of fact and circumstantial evidence”. Here, the Sudan has presented “a series of facts linked together and leading logically to a single conclusion”.
31. Finally, it cannot seriously be argued that the UAE was unaware of the existence of this dispute prior to the filing of the Sudan’s Application. I can be brief.
(a) First, in a letter to the President of the Security Council dated 26 April 2024, the Sudan stated that “the support of the United Arab Emirates for the criminal Rapid Support Forces militia, which has waged war against the State and citizens, makes the United Arab Emirates a partner in all the crimes and atrocities that this militia has committed”. The Sudan demanded that the UAE be held responsible for crimes including “crimes amounting to genocide”.
(b) Second, during the Security Council meeting held on 18 June 2024, the Sudan stated that “[t]he Security Council must . . . identify by name the State sponsoring that plague, which is subjecting the people of the Sudan to gradual genocide”. The Sudan concluded: “The United Arab Emirates is a country that is sponsoring systematic and ethnically based terrorism in the Sudan”; “[t]he Rapid Support Forces . . . are supported, sponsored and incited by the United Arab Emirates to fight in the Sudan and perpetrate crimes and rapes”. In the same meeting, the UAE denied all of this as “false”.
(c) Third, during the Security Council meeting held on 11 September 2024, the Sudan stated that the “United Arab Emirates . . . fuels the war and supports the militia that has committed the crime of genocide”.
(d) Fourth, in a press release dated 12 February 2025, the Sudan stated that the RSF, “backed by its regional sponsor, is escalating its campaign of genocide against the majority of Darfur’s population. The terrorist militia has been waging a brutal, ongoing attack on the Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons”. It further stated that the RSF targeted internally displaced persons “on an ethnic basis”. The press release concluded that “[t]he militia’s regional sponsor bears direct responsibility for the ongoing genocide”.
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