In early January 2025, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced his conclusion that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and its associated militias had committed genocide in Sudan during the civil war that has decimated that country for the past two years.Footnote 1 At the same time, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on RSF commander Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa (Hemedti), for leading an organization that threatens the peace, security, or stability of Sudan, and seven United Arab Emirates (UAE) companies and a Sudanese national, for providing money and weapons to the RSF.Footnote 2 Secretary Blinken had determined a year earlier that the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF had committed war crimes during the conflict and that the RSF and allied militias had committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing as well.Footnote 3 Secretary Blinken's genocide determination came twenty years after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell concluded that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed militias (the future RSF that were then allied with the Sudanese military) committed genocide during a counterinsurgency campaign in the Darfur region.Footnote 4
The current conflict dates to April 2023 when fighting began between Hamdan's RSF forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.Footnote 5 Al-Burhan had governed the country following the ouster of Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019, first through a power-sharing agreement between civilians and the military and then after a coup that was undertaken in cooperation with Hamdan, who became the country's number two. Hamdan and al-Burhan's collaboration would last only eighteen months before it broke down into the fighting that continues to the present.
The war's consequences have been horrific for the people of Sudan. As of February 2025, there were 12.5 million forcibly displaced persons due to the conflict, 8.9 million internally and 2.3 million in neighboring countries, amounting to more than a quarter of the country's population of 48 million.Footnote 6 The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification's Famine Review Committee found that by the end of 2024 there were was “Famine in at least five areas of Sudan.”Footnote 7 It also “project[ed] Famine in five additional areas [by May 2025]” and identified a risk of famine in seventeen others.Footnote 8 Altogether, more than half of Sudan's population—about 25 million people—were facing acute food insecurity.Footnote 9 Though the number of dead, directly from the war as well as from avoidable mortality, is difficult to quantify, some estimate that it may be as high as 150,000.Footnote 10 In a briefing given to the Security Council in early 2025, Edem Wosornu, director of the Operations and Advocacy Division of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, called the situation “a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions.”Footnote 11
The deaths, famine, hunger, destruction, and displacement were not just the side effects of the armed conflict, they were also the result of acts—atrocities—committed by both the RSF and the SAF.Footnote 12 In his finding of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Secretary Blinken gave some examples: the abuse and killing of detainees; the terrorizing of women and girls through sexual violence; and the targeting and hunting down of civilians and the destruction of their homes on the basis of their ethnicity.Footnote 13 In his genocide finding, Secretary Blinken noted that “[t]he R.S.F. and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys—even infants—on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.”Footnote 14 He also indicated that “[t]hose same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”Footnote 15 In announcing the imposition of sanctions against Al-Burhan, Secretary Blinken found that the SAF “has violated international humanitarian law[,] . . . [has] use[d] . . . food deprivation as a tactic of war[,] and [has] deliberate[ly] obstruct[ed] . . . the free flow of emergency humanitarian aid to millions of Sudanese.”Footnote 16
Secretary Blinken has said that “[t]he United States is committed to holding accountable those responsible for these atrocities,” but the consequences of his determinations—of the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide—have had no apparent effect on the actions of the RSF and SAF or their international backers.Footnote 17 Designations for sanctions and declarations of ineligibility for entry into the United States have been the only direct forms of accountability that have been announced to date.Footnote 18 Beyond that, U.S. measures have been designed to encourage and support criminal accountability mechanisms (such as that at the International Criminal Court) and end the hostilities.Footnote 19 Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack said that “[t]he Secretary made [his] determination [regarding war crimes and crimes against humanity] to bear witness to, and to shine a light on, the abuses suffered by the Sudanese people at the hands of the very forces who are meant to protect them.”Footnote 20 Doing so, the administration hoped, would help “rally the international community to help us end the violence, address the humanitarian crisis, and promote justice for survivors and victims. . . . [W]e will continue to track and document the scope and breadth of the belligerents’ myriad crimes.”Footnote 21 Despite diplomatic efforts at the Security Council and in multilateral and bilateral talks, however, the United States, which does not support either side and has contributed more than $2.3 billion in humanitarian aid to Sudan since the war began, has not been successful at negotiating a ceasefire or gaining agreement on measures to protect civilians.Footnote 22
Among some politicians and non-governmental organizations, there was hope that the finding of genocide would lead the United States to increase pressure on the UAE, the RSF's biggest backer, to end its covert arms shipments to the group.Footnote 23 Before the genocide finding, Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Sara Jacobs had introduced legislation that would have paused U.S. arms sales to the UAE until the administration could certify that the UAE is not arming the RSF.Footnote 24 They also introduced a joint resolution that would have halted a pending U.S. sale of missiles to the UAE.Footnote 25 In a December 2024 letter to the president, they wrote: “The U.S. should not be sending weapons to the UAE so long as it is aiding and abetting a group that is one of the primary drivers of the humanitarian disaster in Sudan and has committed atrocity crimes.”Footnote 26 Deputy Assistant to the President Brett McGurk replied a couple of weeks later that “[d]espite reports we have received suggesting the contrary has occurred to date, the UAE has informed the Administration that it is not now transferring any weapons to the RSF and will not do so going forward.”Footnote 27 Seven UAE companies were sanctioned, though, in connection with the genocide determination.Footnote 28 In a statement, the UAE Foreign Ministry said that it took “its role in protecting the integrity of the international financial system extremely seriously. We remain committed to combating financial crime globally.”Footnote 29
