Amnesty said it had verified pictures of the armoured vehicles on the ground in Darfur fitted with the French system. Photo: Amnesty
Amnesty International has accused French military technology of being used in Sudan’s ongoing civil war, in violation of a UN arms embargo.
It says the Rapid Support Forces militia is using vehicles in the Darfur region supplied by the United Arab Emirates that are fitted with French hardware as it battles the army, News.Az reports, citing BBC.
“Our research shows that weaponry designed and manufactured in France is in active use on the battlefield in Sudan,” said Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard.
Aid workers say the conflict in Sudan has led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with many thousands at risk of famine.
The Galix defence system – made in France by companies KNDS and Lacroix – is used for land forces to help counter close-range attacks.
Amnesty said the weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious rights violations, adding that the French government must ensure the companies “immediately stop the supply of this system to the UAE”.
The rights group shared images, which it said it had verified, of destroyed vehicles on the ground that had the Galix system visible on them.
It said that the UAE and France had a long-standing partnership in the defence sector and cited a parliamentary report indicating that French companies had delivered about 2.6bn euros ($2.74bn; £2.16bn) in military equipment to the UAE between 2014 and 2023.
It said the companies had a responsibility to respect human rights and to conduct “due diligence throughout their entire value chain”.
Amnesty says that it had contacted the affected companies and the French authorities regarding the use of the defence system but had received no response.
“If France cannot guarantee through export controls, including end user certification, that arms will not be re-exported to Sudan, it should not authorise those transfers,” it said.
The UN first imposed an arms embargo in Darfur in 2004, following allegations of ethnic cleansing against the region’s non-Arabic population.
Amnesty has called for the embargo to be expanded to the rest of Sudan, and to strengthen its monitoring mechanism following the outbreak of a civil war last year.
Amnesty has urged all countries to stop directly and indirectly supplying arms to Sudan’s fighting factions.