OTTAWA — A prominent human rights group is calling on Ottawa to follow the U.S. and declare that recent actions by Sudan's paramilitary force amount to genocide — but the Liberal government has been silent so far.
Back in April, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights accused the Rapid Support Forces of carrying out a genocide in the Darfur region after documenting numerous incidents targeting an ethnic group during Sudan's brutal civil war.
That month, Canada sanctioned certain militants and companies in Sudan but did not declare a genocide or target the alleged foreign sources of weapons.
On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Rapid Support Forces is committing genocide.
"The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence," Blinken said in a Tuesday statement.
"Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies."
Blinken imposed sanctions on members of the RSF and on companies in the United Arab Emirates accused of providing arms to the militants.
The UAE is a U.S. ally and a country that Canada has described as "a critical partner" in humanitarian initiatives. The UAE has been accused repeatedly of arming the RSF, something the country has strenuously denied, despite evidence to the contrary.
The U.S. had already accused the Rapid Support Forces of war crimes and ethnic cleansing in December 2023.
The Raoul Wallenberg Centre says it has documented systemic violence by RSF militants in different areas, all toward non-Arab groups.
"The only reasonable inference to be made from these patterns is an intent to destroy the Masalit group, in whole or in part," reads its April analysis, noting that all states following the Genocide Convention have a duty to act.
The April analysis noted that Russia's Wagner Group is among those "complicit in the genocide by providing the RSF with extensive financial, political, and military support." It called on Canada to sanction corporations and individuals in the UAE arming the militants.
The group said that Tuesday's "long-awaited decision should be seen as a call to action, for Canada and the entire international community to join in this endeavour not to fail the people of Darfur for a second time in a single generation."
Darfur was the site of an ethnic conflict between 2003 and 2005 which the International Criminal Court is still investigating as a possible genocide. The violence was led by a group called the Janjaweed, from which the Rapid Support Forces was created.
The Sudanese civil war began nearly two years ago when the country's military, the Sudanese Armed Forces, took up arms against its paramilitary Rapid Support Forces after a struggle for political leadership during which wide swaths of the population demanded civilian, democratic rule.
The conflict is considered the world’s biggest current humanitarian catastrophe, although it gets far less international attention than conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
More than 28,000 people have been killed in the conflict since it started in April 2023, and millions have been forced to flee their homes. The fighting has left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country.
Blinken said the finding against the RSF was not intended to support either side in the conflict, but rather to promote accountability for war crimes and other atrocities. Both sides have been accused of reckless violence.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has yet to comment on whether Sudan is committing genocide, despite multiple requests to her office this week.
On Friday, Canada was part of an unrelated joint statement with the U.S. and four other countries marking the 20th anniversary of the peace agreement that ultimately led to the secession of South Sudan, now an independent country.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 10, 2025.
— With files from The Associated Press.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press