UN warns war economy sustains armed conflict in Sudan – JURIST
UN DECLARING on Wednesday that Sudan’s war economy is contributing to sustaining continuity armed conflict between the Sudanese military forces and the Rapid Support Force (RSF), through the trade of various Sudanese goods, including gum arabic, one of the country’s main exports.
Apart from the foreign army SUPPORTING and arms supplies, the conflict in Sudan has been supported by income generated by the trade in goods. The UN noted that as the costs of sustaining military operations have risen, parties to the conflict have relied on control of territory, trade routes and goods to generate revenue, resulting in a “self-perpetuating” conflict. This income is related to the trade of gold, livestock and agricultural products, generated by their extraction, export and payments established along the trade routes.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, stressed that Sudan’s wealth of natural resources is far from benefiting the country’s people and is instead undermining human rights and fueling conflict.
In this regard, the UN conducted a REPORT focusing on Sudan’s trade in gum arabic, an ingredient used in various cosmetic and pharmaceutical products, and its global value chain to demonstrate how this trade violates international human rights and fuels armed conflict.
The report found that millions of Sudanese citizens who earn their living through the gum arabic trade have experienced numerous human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, looting and extortion by warring parties and related actors. These abuses are the result of large-scale looting and conflict-related disruptions of the Arab rubber value chain by armed groups seeking to control the trade and profit from its revenues, which have severely affected the livelihoods of civilians who are already facing dire humanitarian aid cuts. CONDiTiONs.
The report further highlighted that armed conflict has reshaped Sudan’s rubber trade by severing export routes, imposing informal taxes and smuggling through cross-border routes into neighboring countries. All these practices have weakened the traceability of the origin of the goods and formal export channels.
Therefore, the UN emphasized that the proliferation of irregular trade in Arabic rubber and other commodities amid the escalating conflict is the shared responsibility of the Sudanese authorities, neighboring countries, resource-related and downstream processing states, and companies involved in the commodity value chain.
On this matter, Türk called on countries and global companies involved in the trade of Sudanese goods to respect UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and to take the necessary measures to ensure that trade and export practices do not violate human rights or support conflict. These measures should include increased attention to human rights as well as stronger control of trade routes and intermediaries.
After three years ongoing conflict in Sudan, the country’s population is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, characterized by malnutritionmass displacement, war crimes against civilians and collapsing of health care infrastructure. The UN has before warned that the escalating armed conflict is further worsening living conditions in the country, amid continued arms flows and shrinking humanitarian funding.
