ICJ urged not to throw Sudan's UAE genocide case out on a 'technicality'
A group of prominent international judges and legal experts have urged the International Court of Justice (ICJ) not to throw out Sudan’s genocide case against the United Arab Emirates on a “technicality”.
The ICJ will deliver its emergency order in the case on 5 May, with the verdict expected to turn on the question of the UAE’s reservation to an article of the Genocide Convention.
In an exclusive legal opinion shared with Middle East Eye, prominent international jurists argue that states “should be compelled to account for their actions in a court of law”.
The signatories include South African judge Richard Goldstone, who was the UN’s chief prosecutor at the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and Hans Corell, formerly the UN legal counsel.
Melanie O’Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former attorney general, are also among the opinion’s signatories.
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On 10 April, a UAE delegation to the ICJ argued that “there is clearly no basis” for the court's “jurisdiction in this case”.
The UAE is one of a handful of countries that have signed the Genocide Convention but made a reservation to Article IX, which stipulates that the ICJ is responsible for “addressing disputes related to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the Genocide Convention”.
The Emirati delegation at the ICJ says this reservation, which argues that the UAE cannot be tried for genocide at the World Court, is a “legitimate exercise of state sovereignty”.
Previously, the ICJ has ruled that the United States, Spain and Rwanda's reservations to Article IX were fair.
Yonah Diamond, the legal counsel of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and an author of the opinion, told MEE the ICJ “has authority over state conduct for violations of international law”.
He said that upholding reservations like the UAE’s “is like allowing a perpetrator of genocide to evade legal accountability as long as they say, ‘I guarantee I won’t commit acts of genocide, but cannot be brought to a court of law if I do’.”
The ICJ is the only court in the world with the power to investigate and bring cases against states accused of breaking the Genocide Convention, which has been effective since 1951 and which the UAE acceded to in 2005.
The court has the power to issue emergency measures, including halting weapons transfers and the laying down of arms.
“To dismiss this case on a technicality alone would be to abandon these communities,” Diamond said, speaking of those in Darfur subjected to attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the UAE is accused of supplying.
“The law exists to bring perpetrators to court, not to shield them from accountability.”
UAE arms to Sudan
On 6 March, Sudan filed an application to open proceedings against the UAE before the ICJ over alleged complicity in acts of genocide against the Darfur’s Masalit community.
The application said that the RSF, which has been at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, had perpetrated genocide, murder, theft, rape and forcible displacement, and that it was “enabled” to do so by direct support from the UAE.
MEE has reported extensively on the network of supply lines through which the UAE arms and supports the RSF.
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF chief better known as Hemeti, has for years exported gold from mines in Sudan to the UAE. The Dagalo family has a string of businesses based in the Emirates.
Abu Dhabi has, throughout the war, denied supporting the RSF.
But on 18 December last year, Brett McGurk, an official in the outgoing US administration of US President Joe Biden, wrote to Senator Chris Van Hollen that “the UAE has informed the Administration that it is not now transferring any weapons to the RSF and will not do so going forward”.
This was seen by multiple diplomatic sources as a tacit admission that the UAE had been supporting the RSF up to that point. Just over a month after receiving the letter, Van Hollen confirmed that the UAE “is providing weapons” to the RSF.
RSF massacres
The RSF has committed massacres across Darfur, the vast western region that it almost completely controls.
Most recently, its fighters have attacked el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and Zamzam, a camp for people displaced during the Darfur genocide of the early 2000s.
In Zamzam and el-Fasher, the RSF has used four Chinese lightweight AH4 howitzers, the only known buyers of which are the UAE.
The paramilitary has also, according to Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, used three Chinese-made drones “consistent with FH-95s” flown into the RSF-controlled Nyala airport.
In April last year, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre concluded there was “clear and convincing evidence” that the RSF and its allied militias were committing genocide against “non-Arab groups” in Darfur, such as the Masalit.
The ICJ said 74 years ago that the principles of the Genocide Convention “are recognised by civilised nations as binding on states, even without any conventional obligation”.
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