Children in Sudan have become collateral damage in the ongoing civil war, with over 10 million children affected by the fighting and nearly a million fleeing to neighboring countries. The U.S. must take steps to hold outside actors accountable for their involvement in the conflict.
In the forgotten civil war in Sudan, children have become collateral damage. For over a year, an entire generation of children has been exposed to unspeakable trauma and forced to cope with the reality that they could be killed, injured or starve to death.
Since the fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), more than 10 million children have been in the active war zone and hundreds have been killed in the crossfire. Nearly 5 million children have fled their homes since the start of the war, with nearly a million making the dangerous trek across borders to Chad, Egypt and South Sudan – making Sudan the largest child displacement crisis in the world.
About three in four children are going hungry daily as this conflict escalates, and a famine is underway affecting half a million people in the Zamzam Internally Displaced Persons camp in North Darfur. Almost no children can go to school, leaving them even more vulnerable to displacement, recruitment by armed groups and sexual violence.
In March, I traveled to refugee settlements in Chad, on the border with Darfur, to meet with some of these refugees. Through my previous work at the State Department, the United Nations, and as a member of Congress, I had been to several refugee camps before, but I had never seen children so clearly traumatized and reeling. My waves and smiles were met with blank, empty stares.
I learned that many refugees in the camp only receive one and a half meals a day. I heard about entire villages that fled Sudan and now live together at the refugee camp. I met survivors of gender-based violence who told me harrowing stories of the heinous acts committed by the RSF in their villages, and of their escape. Many of the refugees, who had survived past conflicts in Sudan, told me that this time, they don’t want to return home.
The U.S. has a moral obligation to use every tool at its disposal to end this bloodshed, give Sudanese kids back their childhood, and prevent this crisis from spiraling even further out of control. In December, the State Department took the critical step of determining that both the SAF and the RSF have committed war crimes in Sudan and that the RSF and its allies have committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. But we need to pair this atrocity determination with substantive and concrete measures to serve as a deterrent for continued abuses, curb the current violence and protect civilians.
One of the fastest ways to end the civil war in Sudan is to hold outside actors accountable for their involvement in the war. Credible reports, including by the United Nations Panel of Experts and the Yale School of Public Health, have found evidence of the United Arab Emirates supplying the RSF via a heavy rotation of cargo planes carrying weapons, ammunition and medical equipment as often as several times per week, in clear violation of the UN arms embargo in Sudan. Without the the UAE’s support, the RSF wouldn’t have been able to act with such impunity and cause so much bloodshed. A new Amnesty International report adds to the growing evidence of the UAE’s support for the RSF.
That is why I introduced the Stand Up for Sudan Act, to prohibit U.S. arms sales to the UAE until the Biden administration can certify that the UAE is no longer providing material support to the RSF. The UAE is one of the biggest buyers of U.S. arms in the world. We have the leverage to send a clear message that funding and fueling this violence is unacceptable. We cannot ignore that one of our partners is bankrolling this war to further its own political and economic goals in Africa.
Stopping the flow of weapons to armed actors in Sudan is the first step to securing a ceasefire between the SAF and the RSF. I know from my background in international conflict resolution that conflict will persist if the warring parties believe they can gain more on the battlefield than at the negotiating table. As long as the UAE and other outside actors continue to interfere and tip the scales in this war, the calculus for the SAF and RSF will likely stay tilted toward war.
Every day this war goes on, Sudanese children will continue to suffer, starve and die. The U.S. has the obligation to do everything it can to end this war quickly and save Sudanese children by cutting off weapons to the UAE until it ends its involvement in the Sudan war.
Sara Jacobs represents the 51st District of California and is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Armed Services Committee
