The United Nations said Thursday that foreign networks are helping fuel Sudan’s brutal war, which has raged between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since 2023, killing at least 59,000 people, displacing about 13 million and pushing large parts of the country into famine.
A U.N. investigation found that a network of companies based in the United Arab Emirates, Colombia, Chad and other countries supplied the RSF with military contractors, weapons, logistics and training.
“The mission finds reasonable grounds to believe that a transnational network supplied the Rapid Support Forces with weapons, logistics, training and foreign personnel, including Colombian contractors involved in advanced weapons and drone systems,” according to a summary of the investigation by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan.
The mission is an independent body established by the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Sudan.
It found that “individuals and entities operating from, registered in or linked to the United Arab Emirates played a significant role in networks involved in the recruitment, financing, transportation and deployment of foreign military contractors and the provision of military-related support benefiting the Rapid Support Forces.”
The UAE regularly denies that it backs the RSF militarily.
The report also said foreign-supplied drones “expanded” the Sudanese army’s drone capabilities, though it added that its findings on external support for the army “remain preliminary.”
The investigators called on the U.N. Security Council to extend its arms embargo on Sudan.
“The weapons, financing, personnel and technology that sustain this war must be constrained,” it said.
Investigators said they had documented drone attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure by both sides that may amount to war crimes.
They also linked foreign-trained fighters to two massacres in 2025 at Zamzam camp and in El Fasher.
Survivors among the more than 100,000 people who fled El Fasher reported that RSF fighters gunned down civilians in homes and on the streets, leaving the city littered with bodies. Satellite images have since appeared to show the RSF disposing of bodies in mass graves or by burning them.
Chad, Colombia and the United Arab Emirates cooperated with the investigators, but “no substantive response” came from Ethiopia, Libya, South Sudan and Somalia. Panama, whose financial industry has faced accusations of industrial-scale money laundering, requested more time to respond. So far, the U.N. said neither the Sudanese military nor the RSF has cooperated with the investigation.
An AP investigation in July showed that Colombian mercenaries had trained children to fight for the RSF. Rights groups say the Colombians were recruited by a state-linked firm in the UAE, which denies providing arms or military support to any warring party in Sudan.
The United States has urged the U.N. to impose new sanctions to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table.
A draft of the U.S. resolution, seen by The Associated Press in August, deplores “the continuous influx of external military assistance, weapons and ammunition to the warring parties, which is prolonging the conflict and undermining mediation efforts,” including the launching of drones and unmanned aerial systems from third countries.
The proposed resolution demands that all countries “cease any direct or indirect support to the warring parties, be it logistical, financial or military, which enables conflict to continue.”
