The federal government is moving to deepen its partnership with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced that the UAE will invest $70 billion in Canada to bolster key sectors including energy, critical minerals, artificial intelligence, infrastructure and mining.
Following this, Carney confirmed that he and President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan will begin negotiations toward a full trade agreement, a signal that the Prime Minister views the UAE as a long term and major economic partner.
Canada’s bid to strengthen its trading and economic relationship with the UAE comes against the backdrop of Sudan’s ongoing civil war, sparking ire from human rights activists and war-crimes investigators.
Complicity in Sudanese civil war atrocities
Several respected human rights organizations and intelligence agencies have credibly accused the UAE of complicity in war crimes, and, according to some experts, genocidal acts carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in their war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
While both parties have committed grievous war crimes, the RSF in particular is accused of committing large-scale, organized and systematic crimes against humanity.
What began as a power struggle between the two factions and their allied militias has since taken on an ethnic dimension, with non-Arab Black African Muslims increasingly being targeted with violence.
“We at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab conclude that targeted ethnic killings are occurring in El Fasher,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health.
Raymond uses high-resolution satellite imagery to detect and document attacks on civilians in Sudan.
Through this work, the Humanitarian Research Lab has identified “the presence of objects consistent with the dimensions of human remains appearing on the street only following the Rapid Support Forces’ takeover of El Fasher.” El Fasher is a strategically important city in Darfur where non-Arab groups such as the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit reside.
Raymond stated that videos he has reviewed that have circulated online show the RSF asking victims about their ethnicity and then referring to those they kill as “abed,” a derogatory term used against non-Arab Indigenous Black African Muslims in Sudan.
He also documented “the presence of operations consistent with body disposal in and around areas that have historically sheltered the Zaghawa people”.
“Forty communities, primarily inhabited by the Zaghawa, have been systematically burned to the ground,” said Raymond.
He stated that the fire damage is consistent with arson, noting that his imagery shows the ground between homes in these communities remained unburned. This pattern indicates the fires were intentionally set rather than accidental.
“The ability for the local community to farm has also been destroyed due to this arson,” said Raymond. These acts are not merely targeted massacres but appear to be part of a broader campaign to render these areas uninhabitable.
By conservative estimates, 150,000 people have been killed and 12 million have been displaced. Sudan is now home to the world’s largest displacement crisis.
There is a confirmed famine in at least two regions, with 20 more localities at risk, in part because starvation tactics have been used by warring factions.
There have also been brutal attacks on the healthcare system.
“When the RSF took over the Saudi hospital in El Fasher they murdered 460 patients, assaulted people and took healthcare workers hostage for ransom,” said Solan Marwah, a humanitarian coordinator for Doctors Without Borders.
Marwah stated the repeated attacks on healthcare facilities, including 15 drone strikes on the Saudi hospital, have severely undermined civilians’ access to lifesaving care when they need it most.
Devastation would not have been possible without UAE support
Activists and experts argue these attacks, at the scale they have been occurring, would not be possible without advanced weaponry provided to the RSF by external actors, namely the United Arab Emirates.
Raymond’s satellite imagery lends credence to the claims that the UAE is implicated in these crimes.
The Humanitarian Research Lab has documented the presence of Chinese-made AH4 howitzers and CH-95 drones in the hands of the RSF. These are advanced, high-end weapons systems with very few international buyers.
Amnesty International reports that the UAE is the only documented purchaser of AH4s from China, and their appearance with the RSF points to the UAE acting as a conduit for Chinese arms.
There have also been documented sightings of UAE-manufactured Nimr Ajban armoured vehicles operated primarily by the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
Satellite imagery, U.S. intelligence and local sources show cargo planes from the UAE landing at Bosaso Airport in Puntland, Somalia, a key trans-shipment hub, before flying to Nyala in Sudan, a logistics centre for the RSF, often with transponders turned off to conceal their movements.
A senior manager at the Bosaso airport told the Middle East Eye that the UAE has funneled more than 500,000 containers marked as hazardous through Bosaso.
China is not the only source of weapons that likely reach the RSF through the UAE however. Raymond notes that arms produced by Canadian companies, including Sterling Cross and the Streit Group, have also made their way onto the battlefield and into the hands of the RSF.
Sterling Cross has not publicly clarified whether it has sold weapons to the UAE, and a 2016 United Nations report accused the Streit Group of supplying arms to the Emirates.
Organizations such as the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights have called on Canada to enact an arms embargo against the UAE and to target key perpetrators and enabling entities with sanctions.
A statement from Global Affairs Canada says that Canada observes an arms embargo on Sudan under UN Sudan Regulations.
“This prohibits any person in Canada or any Canadian outside Canada from knowingly exporting arms and related material, wherever situated, to Sudan or to any person in Sudan,” the statement reads.
Furthermore, Global Affairs states that it can impose dealings bans on individuals engaging in the sale of weapons.
According to Global Affairs those found to be violating the Sudan arms embargo could face fines, seizure of goods, and criminal prosecution.
Global Affairs did not address the issue of arms sales to the UAE and if those materials were being sent by the UAE to Sudan. The statement from Global Affairs emphasized that Minister Anita Anand was working with partners to find a resolution to the conflict.
“Minister Anand has been regularly engaging with partners on the need to find a solution to this conflict, including with H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the UAE,” the Global Affairs statement reads. “Canada will continue to engage with our international counterparts, including regional players, working to bring about an end to the violence and atrocities taking place in Sudan.”
Activists and international humanitarian lawyers argue that Canada has an obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent and punish genocides occurring globally.
Mutasim Ali, a legal advisor for the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, said at a press conference on Parliament Hill addressing the crisis in Sudan that “the world has a chance to stop a genocide in real time.”
Prime Minister Carney said he raised the situation in Sudan in his conversation with President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. But activists, humanitarians and war-crimes investigators say they want concrete action, not merely statements of concern.
“We must not fail the people of Sudan again,” said Ali.
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