UAE champions climate action while arming genocidal rapists
The host of this year’s climate negotiations is reported to be supplying arms to one side in Sudan’s civil war.
War is bad for the climate. That hasn’t stopped the United Arab Emirates from hosting this year’s COP climate negotiations while bankrolling one side of the war in Sudan. And, despite gender justice being a stated principle of COP, that side is accused of using rape as a weapon of war. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is one of two parties in the Sudan war.
Since April, it’s been fighting General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto ruler of Sudan and leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, who first came to power in 2019 after pro-democracy protesters ousted longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir.
In September, the United States imposed sanctions on RSF leaders, whom it accused of being armed and supported by the Russian military contractor Wagner Group. So the RSF turned to the UAE for weapons and support, according to reporting by the US-based Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
In recent weeks, the RSF has advanced into the Darfur region in western Sudan. It has been accused of ethnically motivated mass killings, and of using rape and sexual violence as weapons of war.
In an open letter published this week, African feminist and anti-war activists call out the UAE’s complicity and see its hosting of COP as “greenwashing”.
Helen Kezie-Nwoha, executive director of the Peace Centre in Uganda, told The Continent that the impact of war on gender inequality and climate change is starkly apparent in Sudan. If the UAE wants its hosting to be seen as a genuine promotion of human rights, it cannot be funding the RSF, she said. Abdullahi Boru Halakhe of Refugees International said the US sanctions against RSF leaders are useless without the UAE snipping the purse strings.
In response to questions from Reuters, a UAE official said their country had “consistently called for de-escalation, a ceasefire, and the initiation of diplomatic dialogue” in Sudan.