Emirati delegation succeeded in making sure no reference to UAE’s role in Sudan’s war was made
Shraddha Joshi is a sociology Master’s student at the University of Cambridge and a recent graduate of Harvard College
Cross-posted from Middle East Eye
Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
The United Arab Emirates “embarked on a lobbying blitz” of European Parliament members to ensure its involvement in the war in Sudan was not mentioned in a resolution calling for the conflict’s end, Politico reported on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Dutch Member of European Parliament (MEP) Marit Maij told DW News about plans to “call on the European Commission to stop the trade negotiations with the UAE for as long as we see that weapons are going through the UAE to the RSF,” referring to Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The call comes in the wake of the widespread atrocities committed by the RSF during its siege and eventual capture of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in western Sudan, which were abetted by advanced weaponry from the UAE.
But following a lobbying effort from an Emirati delegation to Strasbourg led by envoy Lana Nusseibeh, the final resolution passed on Thursday included no references to the UAE’s role in the war.
Middle East Eye has reported extensively on the UAE’s use of supply routes running through Somalia, Libya, Chad and elsewhere to supply the RSF, which has been accused of committing mass killings, rape, ethnic cleansing and torture.
In May 2025, a report by human rights organisation Amnesty International revealed that the UAE’s government was sending Chinese weapons to the RSF.
US intelligence reports confirmed similar findings in October, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
In April of 2025, the Sudanese government accused the UAE of complicity in genocide in a court case brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In spite of long-standing concerns about the UAE’s role in the war, the Emirati delegation in Strasbourg circulated communiques denying any material or political support for the RSF, Politico reported.
According to Euronews, Nusseibeh met with Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, on Monday, and later met with MEPs from other political parties.
The Euronews report also revealed that while MEPs from left-wing parties did aim to raise amendments to the resolution outlining the UAE’s role and calling for greater accountability, conservative groups, including the European People’s Party (EPP) and right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), ultimately rejected the amendments during Thursday’s voting procedures.
The adopted text of the resolution condemns the “mass murder and mass atrocities” committed by the RSF during the capture of el-Fasher, and calls for sanctions against “financiers and external enablers, for their responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law,” but does not specify said enablers.
The only remaining reference to the UAE was the parliament’s affirmation of a 12 September joint resolution issued by the Quad (made up of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and United States) calling for an end to the war.
Following Thursday’s vote, Emirati envoy Nusseibeh issued a statement welcoming the resolution and affirming the UAE’s “unwavering commitment to support all endeavours to address this catastrophic civil war”.
This week, General Yasser al-Atta of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which has been at war with the RSF since April 2023, told journalists that the “world has been silent regarding all the RSF has done in Sudan”, adding that “this silence was bought by the power of the UAE’s money”.
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