ICJ throws out Sudan genocide case against UAE

THE HAGUE: The top United Nations court on Monday threw out Sudan´s case against the United Arab Emirates over alleged complicity in genocide during the brutal Sudanese civil war.

Sudan had taken the UAE to the International Court of Justice over its alleged support for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), saying it was contributing to a genocide -- accusations denied by the Emiratis.

But the ICJ said it “manifestly lacked” jurisdiction to rule on the case and threw out it out. When the UAE signed up to the UN´s Genocide Convention in 2005, it entered a “reservation” to a key clause that allows countries to sue others at the ICJ over disputes.

This reservation meant the ICJ did not have the power to intervene in the case. A UAE official hailed the judges´ ruling. “This decision is a clear and decisive affirmation of the fact that this case was utterly baseless,” Reem Ketait, deputy assistant minister for political affairs at the UAE foreign ministry, said in a statement to AFP.

Before the ruling, Ketait had accused Sudan of lodging the case in a “cynical attempt to divert attention from their own brutal record of atrocities against Sudanese civilians”. Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. The war has triggered what aid agencies call the world´s largest displacement, and hunger crises.