Sudan Sanction Designations
Require a Comprehensive Policy
January 16, 2025 - Today, the United States issued sanctions on Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), as well as one company and one individual involved in weapons procurement for SAF.
This follows sanctions that were issued January 7th on the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)’s leader, Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, commonly known as “Hemedti”, seven RSF-owned companies located in the United Arab Emirates, and one other individual.
Last week, the U.S. also made a determination genocide had been committed by the RSF in Sudan. This updated atrocity determination followed a December 2023 determination that members of SAF and the RSF committed war crimes, and that members of the RSF and allied militias committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
PAEMA welcomes these long overdue designations which recognise the reality of the situation that millions of Sudanese are experiencing. Yet what is still lacking is a comprehensive policy to address the crisis. Without a strategy, these much-delayed actions risk not having the urgent effects that are necessary to end the needless suffering of Sudanese civilians who are enduring a trifecta of the world’s largest displacement, food insecurity, and protection crises.
The reasons stated for the sanctions include the denial of humanitarian access and SAF’s targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. The SAF and RSF have both been using mass starvation as a weapon of war since the early stages of the conflict. Famine has been declared in five areas of the country and nearly 25 million people - about half the population face acute food insecurity. Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the war, caught between warring parties. These clear violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by both SAF and RSF have been well documented since the start of the war but pleas from Sudanese civilians for support continue to go widely unanswered.
The New York Times has reported that senior U.S. officials have also said the Sudanese Armed Forces have used chemical weapons in at least two occasions against the RSF since war broke out in April 2023. This would not be the first time that there has been documentation of Sudan’s military using chemical weapons. In 2016, Amnesty International said they found credible evidence that Sudanese government forces repeatedly used chemical weapons during their offensive campaign in the Jebel Marra region of Darfur. Sudanese forces have been documented in using chemical weapons as far back as 1999, when Médecins Sans Frontières reported the suspected use of chemical weapons in Equatoria province, in what is now South Sudan. These findings demonstrate the devastating consequences of continued inaction by the international community where entrenched persecution continues to go unpunished.
If civilians are not dying from a bullet or bombs from the sky, they are dying from preventable famine.
- Shayna Lewis, PAEMA Sudan Specialist and Senior Adviser in her address to the UN Security Council, December 19, 2024
With no real consequences for their actions, the belligerents in Sudan have continued to act with impunity. RSF’s siege on El Fasher has been unrelenting. SAF continues to bomb communities in South Darfur. The sanctions on Burhan, in the final days of the Biden administration, come at a time when the SAF is committing widespread atrocities. Following the U.S. actions against the RSF last week, the SAF has recaptured the strategic city of Wad Madani. Since the recapture, there has been documentation of grave abuses being committed by SAF soldiers and allied militias in El Gezira State, including ethnically targeted extrajudicial killings.
As a new administration is poised to take power next week in the United States, it’s critical that the U.S. develops a comprehensive strategy to address the war. The man-made catastrophe in Sudan has always been preventable but has continued due to a lack of political will and ambition on the part of the United States, UN, African Union and the international community more broadly.
The sanctions that have been designated must be enforced. External backers to the conflict, who continue to finance and benefit from the death, rape, and starvation of Sudanese, must be held to account through additional sanctions. These sanctions will be much more impactful if taken multilaterally. Coordinated action is required to address the growing number of needs in Sudan - both the intervention of life-saving assistance as well as accountability. The prevailing impunity in Sudan that has lasted for decades will continue to consume the country if urgent and effective action is not taken.
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For further information, contact Lauren Fortgang, at lauren@paema.ngo
PAEMA is dedicated to preventing and ending mass atrocities by amplifying the integral role of community centered solutions. We work with local communities in our areas of focus to establish and sustain relationships to drive structural and policy change.