UAE rejects Sudan's claim at UN court that it is breaching genocide convention by funding rebels

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The United Arab Emirates argued at the UN's top court on Thursday that it has no jurisdiction to rule on a claim of genocide lodged by Sudan.

The UAE told the judges at the International Court of Justice that the allegations the country is breaching the genocide convention by arming and funding the rebel paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces were a misuse of the institution.

Sudan wants The Hague-based court to issue emergency orders, known as provisional measures, including telling the UAE to do all it can to prevent the killing and other crimes targeting the Masalit people.

''The idea that the UAE is somehow the driver of this reprehensible conflict in Sudan could not be further from the truth,'' said Reem Ketait, a senior official at the UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She described the case as "the most recent iteration of the applicant's misuse of our international institutions as a stage from which to attack the UAE.''

Both Sudan and the UAE are signatories to the 1948 genocide convention. The United Arab Emirates, however, has a caveat to part of the treaty which legal experts say makes it unlikely that the case will proceed.

''The ICJ has previously said that this kind of reservation is allowed and is a barrier to a case going forward. The court is most likely to say the same thing in this case, meaning that this case will not go forward,'' Melanie O'Brien, an associate professor of international law at the University of Western Australia and an expert on the convention, told The Associated Press.

Sudan descended into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023 when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary rebels broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions.

The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and a U.S. ally, has been repeatedly accused of arming the RSF, something it has strenuously denied despite evidence to the contrary.

Conflict Observatory, a monitoring group which is funded by the U.S. State Department, has identified aircraft it says carried UAE arms transfers to the RSF. Those flights went through Maréchal Idriss Deby international airport in Amdjarass, Chad. The UAE says the purpose of the flights was to support a local hospital.

In January, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, also known as Hemedti, had been targeted for sanctions along with seven RSF-owned companies in the United Arab Emirates. That came as the U.S. declared the RSF rebels are committing genocide.

The war has killed more than 24,000 people and driven over 14 million people — about 30% of the population — from their homes, according to the United Nations. An estimated 3.2 million Sudanese have escaped to neighboring countries.