Sudan civil groups urge UN to extend arms embargo nationwide
September 4, 2026 (KHARTOUM) – Sudanese civil society groups on Friday urged the United Nations Security Council to expand an arms embargo beyond the war-torn Darfur region to cover the entire country, citing findings of widespread civilian casualties from drone warfare.
The call by the Civil Democratic Alliance of the Revolutionary Forces (Somoud) and the Emergency Lawyers group comes as international rights bodies intensify pressure on foreign actors to stop supplying both the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Somoud said in a statement that findings presented to the UN Human Rights Council by a fact-finding mission showed both sides committed grave abuses by deploying drones against hospitals, displacement camps, schools, and markets.
The group said the UN report documented more than 1,000 civilian deaths from drone strikes in the first five months of 2026 alone. The casualty figures could not be independently verified by Reuters.
Among the incidents cited was a strike on a nursery and a hospital in South Kordofan that killed 114 people, including roughly 60 children, and an attack on a teaching hospital in Ed Daein that killed at least 70 people.
Repeated strikes on cities including El Obeid, Kadugli, and Dilling also crippled basic water, power, and medical infrastructure, Somoud said.
External military backing has prolonged the fighting and worsened the humanitarian crisis, the alliance said, urging the international community to support investigations into cross-border weapons networks and sanction entities involved in arms transfers.
Emergency Lawyers, a legal monitoring group, also urged the Human Rights Council to renew the fact-finding mission’s mandate and bolster the UN Panel of Experts to track illicit arms trafficking.
The legal group called for expanding the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court beyond Darfur to cover all of Sudan, alongside the creation of an independent tribunal to prosecute war-related atrocities.