Israeli forces advance in southern Gaza, tanks in Rafah

“There are hundreds of thousands of weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition going into Sudan,” fueling widespread human rights violations, said Brian Kastner at Amnesty.
The UN Security Council should “immediately extend the arms embargo to the rest of Sudan, and strengthen its monitoring and verification mechanisms,” Depros Muchena said.

Port Sudan: Amnesty International called on the United Nations on Thursday to extend an arms embargo on Darfur to cover all of Sudan, in a report on the flood of weapons in the war-torn country.
The 15-month war between Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces “is being fueled by an almost uninterrupted supply of weapons to Sudan by states and corporate actors around the world,” the rights watchdog said.
In a new report titled 'New Weapons Fueling the Sudan Conflict', it has been found that weapons manufactured or transferred from countries such as Russia, Turkey, Serbia and China are being imported and used in the battlefield.
Since it began in April last year, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, according to Tom Perillo, the US ambassador to Sudan, with some estimating more than 150,000.
It also uprooted more than 10 million people, in what the United Nations called the world's worst displacement crisis.
“Millions of weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition are going into Sudan,” Brian Kastner, Amnesty's head of crisis research, told AFP, fueling widespread human rights abuses.
The existing arms embargo, which has only been enforced in Sudan's West Darfur region since 2004, is “both too narrowly focused” and “too weakly enforced to have any meaningful effect on stemming the flow of these weapons,” the report found.
The UN Security Council should “immediately extend the arms embargo to the rest of Sudan, and strengthen its monitoring and verification mechanisms,” said Depros Muchena, Amnesty's senior director for regional human rights impact.
If the Security Council — which has called its response to the Sudan War Amnesty “woefully inadequate” — does not extend the embargo, “all states and corporate actors must immediately cease all arms and ammunition supplies to Sudan,” or risk violating the Arms Treaty. Obligations and International Humanitarian Law.
Both sides in the conflict have been repeatedly accused of war crimes, including the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and the blocking of humanitarian aid, while millions of Sudanese are on the brink of starvation.
According to Kastner, the large volume of small arms entering Sudan is a significant threat.
“Most people are killed with small arms. Most violations, including sexual violence and displacement, are facilitated by small arms,” ​​said the veteran weapons investigator.
“It is individual soldiers with rifles who are removing people from their homes and burning them,” he continued.
On Monday, the French medical charity Doctors Without Borders said that thousands of war wounded had been treated at a main hospital in the Sudanese capital, with 53 percent suffering from gunshot wounds.

Leave a Comment