A broad coalition of global human rights and legal organizations, led by the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR), has formally submitted a legal request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) calling for a full investigation into high-level foreign officials accused of enabling widespread war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s long-troubled Darfur region. The Article 15 communication, filed Monday, marks the second major push in weeks to hold external actors legally accountable for their alleged role in fueling the Sudanese conflict that has now entered its fourth year.
The filing does not limit scrutiny to parties directly involved in the Sudanese civil war, which pits the country’s official Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Instead, it outlines detailed allegations that external state actors and their senior officials have continued to supply both warring factions with the weapons, military equipment, financing, logistical backing, and mercenary fighters required to carry out atrocities against civilian populations, in direct violation of a decades-old United Nations arms embargo on Darfur.
Under the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding legal framework, the coalition is pushing prosecutors to examine potential criminal liability for foreign actors under Articles 25(3)(c) and 25(3)(d) — provisions that explicitly cover aiding, abetting, and knowingly contributing to crimes carried out by organized groups acting with a shared criminal purpose.
Specific high-level officials from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other regional states that have openly or covertly backed the RSF are named in the submission, including officials and intermediaries based in Libya, Ethiopia, Chad, Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda. The document also outlines broader alleged links between Iran, Turkey, and Egypt and crimes committed by the SAF, the Sudanese national military.
The coalition’s case draws on a combination of confidential source intelligence and open-source investigative findings from multiple independent outlets and watchdog groups. A detailed annex included with the filing maps out alleged RSF supply lines that originate at three major UAE airports — Abu Dhabi International, Al Ain International, and Ras Al Khaimah International — with suspected arms cargo routed through transit hubs in Chad, Libya, and Ethiopia. The submission notes that transfers of military supplies increased dramatically starting in April 2023, when full-scale civil war resumed between the SAF and RSF, and have continued uninterrupted to the present day.
These allegations align with a growing body of independent investigations that have documented the Gulf state’s material support for the RSF, despite consistent official denials from the UAE that it supplies weapons or military assistance to the paramilitary group. Multiple independent probes have confirmed that weapons and military materiel have been transported to RSF forces via a secret air bridge through Chad’s Amdjarass, with the UAE repeatedly identified as the primary supplier. A January 2024 investigation by Middle East Eye uncovered a sprawling network of supply lines and regional alliances stretching through Libya, Chad, Uganda, and breakaway regions of Somalia that the UAE uses to funnel arms to the RSF. A separate 2024 New York Times investigation found the UAE had disguised weapons shipments to the RSF as humanitarian aid. In April 2024, Middle East Eye revealed the RSF receives covert support from an Ethiopian military base in Asosa, matching the coalition’s allegations. Most recently, Human Rights Watch documented that Colombian mercenaries hired by a UAE-based private security firm transited Emirati military bases before deploying to Sudan to fight alongside the RSF.
the ICC already holds jurisdiction over atrocities committed in Darfur, following a 2005 United Nations Security Council referral that grants the court authority to prosecute any individual — regardless of nationality — for international crimes committed in the region. While legal scholars note this jurisdiction could theoretically extend to Emirati officials accused of aiding RSF crimes, significant procedural obstacles remain: the UAE has never ratified the Rome Statute, and securing evidence and state cooperation would require extensive international support.
Irwin Cotler, the founder and international chair of the RWCHR and former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General, emphasized that meaningful accountability for Darfur’s atrocities cannot stop at the warring parties on the battlefield. “The suffering of the Sudanese people will not end so long as the perpetrators of atrocity crimes – and the networks of impunity that enable and sustain them – continue to act without consequence,” Cotler said in a statement accompanying the filing.
This submission is the second high-profile request to the ICC in as many weeks targeting foreign complicity in Darfur. Earlier this month, a group of Sudanese atrocity survivors filed their own separate Article 15 communication targeting senior Emirati officials and business leaders, including UAE Vice President Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
ICC officials confirmed earlier this year that the court’s prosecutor’s office is already actively investigating atrocities committed in Darfur since the resumption of full-scale conflict in April 2023, but to date no investigation has been opened into the role of external enablers. In a January 2025 report to the UN Security Council, the ICC prosecutor’s office explicitly acknowledged that external actors have prolonged the crisis, describing the RSF’s 500-day deadly siege of North Darfur’s capital El Fasher as “entirely manmade.” The report noted, “This conflict has been perpetuated by regional and international actors whose material and financial assistance only guarantees that this catastrophe in Darfur worsens and that war crimes and crimes against humanity will needlessly continue.”
To date, the ICC has not issued any arrest warrants for Sudanese individuals connected to the current 2023–2025 conflict. A court spokesperson told Middle East Eye that the prosecutor’s office is currently prioritizing investigations into gender-based violence and crimes against children, abuses that a recent UN report confirmed are widespread: last week, a UN assessment found the RSF is responsible for the vast majority of sexual violence crimes committed by all warring parties in Sudan over the past three years.
The coalition of NGOs that submitted Monday’s communication says it remains hopeful that the ICC prosecutor’s office will agree to open a formal investigation into the foreign officials and networks that have continued to sustain atrocities in Darfur from abroad.