A Yale University human rights investigator has told UK lawmakers that the British government was uniquely positioned to prevent one of the deadliest mass-atrocity events of the century in Sudan — and chose not to act, prioritising its diplomatic and economic relationship with the United Arab Emirates instead. Nathaniel Raymond, director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, delivered written and oral testimony to a parliamentary select committee detailing two years of warnings that he says the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office repeatedly ignored, questioned or quietly buried (Middle East Eye).
The Fall of El Fasher
The warnings centred on El Fasher, a city in Sudan’s Darfur region held by the Sudanese army until the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces overran it in October 2025. What followed, according to UN fact-finding missions, bore the hallmarks of genocide: summary executions, abductions, torture and sexual violence, with a death toll estimated by Raymond’s team at a minimum of 60,000 people over roughly three days — a figure some accounts put as high as 70,000 (The Canary).
Raymond’s testimony describes a pattern that began well before the city fell. His lab first briefed the FCDO in July 2023, urging UN peacekeeping intervention. By May 2024, he was sharing intelligence in London tracking mobile phones moving between RSF headquarters in Sudan and locations in Ethiopia and the UAE — patterns his team interpreted as evidence of a coordinated support network for the militia (The Guardian, via Genocide Watch).
“A Political Problem” for the Foreign Office
Perhaps the most damning detail in Raymond’s account is his description of an FCDO atrocity-prevention official questioning whether his casualty estimates were simply too high to be politically convenient, in an encrypted exchange he says he came to understand as reflecting institutional discomfort rather than factual doubt. A promised follow-up briefing that would have included UN officials, he told MPs, was never scheduled and never occurred (Middle East Eye).
As the UN Security Council’s designated “penholder” on Sudan, the UK carried formal responsibility for driving the international response to the crisis. A Security Council resolution demanding the RSF halt its siege passed — but did not name the UAE, and one diplomat quoted anonymously described the practical consequences as simply “zero.” Raymond’s assessment is that the resolution’s silence on Emirati involvement effectively signalled consent to the militia’s backers that no meaningful cost would follow (The Guardian, via Genocide Watch).
A Failure Spanning Two Governments
Notably, the policy pattern Raymond describes spans administrations: it began under former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s government and continued under Keir Starmer’s, running across the tenures of foreign secretaries David Cameron, David Lammy and current foreign secretary Yvette Cooper (Orinoco Tribune). Then-Africa minister Andrew Mitchell reportedly met Chad’s president shortly before the El Fasher siege began to discreetly urge him to curb UAE arms smuggling into Darfur — a private diplomatic move that stood in contrast to the UK’s public silence on the Emirati connection.
The Crisis Has Not Stopped
The stakes of this debate are not merely historical. Fighting has since shifted to El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, where the UN Human Rights Council convened an emergency session as the Sudanese army and RSF vie for control of the city. More than 11,000 people, including over 5,500 children, were displaced from El Obeid in a two-week span according to Save the Children, and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has warned of another unfolding catastrophe (Democracy Now!).
Foreign Secretary Cooper has publicly demanded the RSF halt its offensive, but campaigners note the UK has so far declined to take any concrete action against the UAE specifically — despite continuing to license arms sales to Abu Dhabi and allowing firms accused of recruiting RSF fighters to operate on British soil (Novara Media).
Why This Matters Beyond Westminster
The episode raises uncomfortable questions that extend well past UK domestic politics: about the durability of the UN Security Council’s penholder system when the penholder has commercial interests entangled with a party to the conflict, and about how readily documented, real-time intelligence on mass atrocities can be neutralised by quiet diplomatic pressure from a wealthy Gulf partner. For a UK government positioning itself as a champion of the “rules-based international order” on Ukraine and elsewhere, the Sudan testimony lands as a direct challenge to that self-image — one that MPs, and increasingly the British public, are unlikely to let quietly fade.
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