French weapons used in Sudan war despite UN arms embargo – Amnesty

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.

“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.

The paramilitary RSF, led by general Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has been at war with Sudan’s regular army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan since April 2023 when the two former allies took up arms against each other in a ferocious power struggle.

The RSF has been accused of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, which it has denied, blaming local militias.

Both parties have been accused of committing war crimes, with the ongoing fighting leaving thousands dead and millions displaced.