Sudan: The inflow of foreign-made weapons and equipment is escalating the conflict and worsening the situation
There is a large and growing body of credible evidence documenting how, during their conduct in the conflict, the warring parties have committed widespread war crimes, crimes against humanity, and serious human rights violations, including in the Darfur region...
Human Rights Watch, among others, has documented devastating ethnic cleansing in West Darfur. Given the prevalence of such atrocities in the conflict, Human Rights Watch has called for the renewal and expansion of the existing arms embargo on Darfur to the rest of Sudan to prevent warring parties acquiring weapons or equipment likely to be used to perpetuate serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, harming civilians.
Against this backdrop, photographs and videos taken by fighters and civilians and posted on social media indicate that the warring parties have access to, and are using, modern, foreign-made weapons and equipment. The emergence of visuals of equipment that Sudanese actors were not previously known to have, or that began to be used more frequently months after the outbreak of the conflict, suggests that the warring parties acquired some of these weapons after April 2023. In one case, lot number markings—alphanumeric codes assigned to a specific manufacturing batch—clearly indicate that the ammunition was manufactured in 2023.
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