The top United Nations court on Monday threw out Sudan’s case against the United Arab Emirates over alleged complicity in genocide during the brutal Sudanese civil war.
Sudan has dragged the UAE before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, arguing it is supplying weapons to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been battling the Sudanese army since 2023.
The UAE denies supporting the rebels and has dismissed Sudan’s case as “political theatre” distracting from efforts to end a war that has killed tens of thousands.
The ICJ said today it “manifestly lacked” jurisdiction to rule on the case and threw out it out.
A UAE official hailed the judges’ ruling.
“This decision is a clear and decisive affirmation of the fact that this case was utterly baseless,” Reem Ketait, aeputy assistant minister for political affairs at the UAE foreign ministry, said in a statement sent to AFP.
Before the ruling, Ketait had accused Sudan of lodging the case in a “cynical attempt to divert attention from their own brutal record of atrocities against Sudanese civilians”.
When the UAE signed up to the UN’s Genocide Convention in 2005, it entered a “reservation” to a key clause that allows countries to sue others at the ICJ over disputes.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
The war has triggered what aid agencies describe as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises. Famine has officially hit five areas across Sudan, according to a UN-backed assessment.
The North Darfur region has been a particular battleground, with at least 542 civilians killed in the past three weeks, according to the United Nations.
The ICJ said it was “deeply concerned about the unfolding human tragedy in Sudan that forms the backdrop to the present dispute”.
“The violent conflict has a devastating effect, resulting in untold loss of life and suffering, in particular in West Darfur,” the court added.
A world away from the horrors on the ground, lawyers in robes and wig
