Yale human rights investigator Nathaniel Raymond is set to testify before the UK Parliament’s Commons International Development Committee that the British government suppressed intelligence about UAE and Ethiopian support for Sudan’s genocidal RSF militia in order to protect its diplomatic and economic relationships with the UAE. According to Raymond, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) officials told him as early as May 2024 that the UK faced “significant private pressure” from the UAE preventing public disclosure of RSF links to Abu Dhabi and Addis Ababa. Raymond’s testimony alleges the FCDO prioritised “economic, security and diplomatic relationships with the UAE above preventing the intentional starvation and genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians.” After El Fasher — the last major city in Darfur not under RSF control — fell to the paramilitary force in October 2025, Raymond privately briefed the committee that at least 60,000 civilians were killed, a figure that an FCDO atrocity-prevention official subsequently questioned as possibly too high. Raymond’s testimony is based on three years of encrypted messages, internal memos, and meeting notes between Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab and the FCDO, as well as mobile phone tracking data placing RSF-linked devices on routes from Addis Ababa through RSF-held Sudan to UAE addresses.
The received wisdom
The mainstream foreign policy establishment’s defence of quiet diplomacy in situations like Sudan runs something like this: public accusation antagonises partners whose cooperation you need on other pressing issues, creates political incentives for those partners to escalate rather than de-escalate their involvement, and ultimately does less for civilian populations than behind-the-scenes pressure applied through trusted channels. The UAE is a significant trading partner for the UK, a key interlocutor in Gulf security, and a source of considerable investment. Ethiopia is a crucial partner on migration, regional stability, and counter-terrorism in the Horn of Africa. Breaking publicly with either country over their involvement in a civil war in a country that most British voters cannot locate on a map is, in this view, a disproportionate sacrifice of concrete interests for symbolic posturing. The FCDO’s response to Raymond’s evidence — that the situation is “not as simple as that” and that “many countries are playing games in Sudan” — reflects this framework: the complexity of the situation is invoked as a reason for caution, not as a reason for more aggressive action.
A different read
The problem with this framework, as applied to Sudan, is that it elevates abstraction over arithmetic. Raymond’s testimony puts the El Fasher death toll at a minimum of 60,000 civilians, excluding deaths from famine or bombardment during the eighteen-month siege — meaning the actual toll is higher. The UN has said the RSF’s assault displayed the “hallmarks of genocide.” The UK is the UN Security Council’s penholder on Sudan — the lead country responsible for managing the international response. Raymond’s own assessment, stated directly: “The UK was our best hope at that time for stopping what we believed would become one of the single largest mass-casualty events of the 21st century.” That is not a marginal figure speaking from the sidelines. That is the director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, who had been sharing tracking data with US government officials, testifying before a parliamentary committee that his best hope was that Britain would act — and that Britain did not.
The complexity argument deserves to be engaged rather than dismissed, because it is not entirely wrong. The UAE’s role in Sudan is not simple: Abu Dhabi has economic interests in Sudanese gold mining, political interests in a stable Gulf-facing Red Sea littoral, and a history of supporting militias across the region as instruments of influence. Ethiopia’s involvement is entangled with its own border and ethnic politics. Constructing a sanctions regime or public condemnation campaign that pressures these actors without destabilising other aspects of the relationship requires genuine diplomatic sophistication. None of this is fabricated complexity. But the complexity argument, when used to justify complete inaction in the face of ongoing mass atrocity, becomes something other than sophisticated diplomacy. It becomes an alibi.
The historical comparison that sits uncomfortably close is Rwanda. The 1994 genocide occurred in a context where Western governments had intelligence about planning, had leverage over the Rwandan government and over France’s involvement in particular, and chose not to act because the diplomatic costs seemed to exceed the benefits of intervention. The post-Rwandan accountability literature is voluminous and damning: the specific argument used to justify inaction — that the situation was complex, that intervention might make things worse, that quiet diplomacy was preferable — is almost word-for-word the argument being offered by the FCDO now. History’s verdict on the Rwanda paralysis is clear. The early evidence on Sudan suggests a similar pattern: intelligence available, leverage not applied, and tens of thousands of civilians dead as the predictable result.
There is a specifically British dimension to this that deserves scrutiny. The UK has presented itself since Brexit as a “global Britain” with an enhanced commitment to human rights diplomacy and values-based foreign policy. The then-Foreign Secretary’s statements on Sudan during the El Fasher siege were not notably weaker in rhetorical terms than those of comparable European foreign ministries. What Raymond’s testimony alleges is that the rhetoric was consciously decoupled from the intelligence — that the government said the right things in public while privately suppressing the evidence that would have obligated more forceful action. If the testimony is accurate, this is not a story about difficult trade-offs in complex situations. It is a story about the systematic falsification of the government’s own stated foreign policy commitments in service of commercial relationships with a Gulf monarchy. The Development Minister’s response — “I would be surprised if it were as simple as that” — is not a denial. It is a hedge. Ethiopia’s role only became public in February 2026 when Reuters reported the secret RSF training camp; the UK had had the intelligence since 2024.
What to watch
Watch whether the Commons International Development Committee produces a formal report and recommendation based on Raymond’s testimony, and whether that report is adopted or suppressed. Watch for any FCDO response that goes beyond the initial hedged non-denial — if the government is prepared to refute specific factual claims in Raymond’s testimony, that would be significant; if it remains in the “complexity” register, that is itself informative. Watch whether the UN Security Council takes any fresh action on Sudan now that El Fasher has fallen; the UK’s penholder role means any Security Council initiative on Sudan runs through London. Finally, watch the UAE’s public response: Abu Dhabi has consistently denied arming the RSF, and how it responds to having that denial publicly tested before a parliamentary committee will reveal something about the durability of the diplomatic relationship the FCDO was reportedly so concerned to protect.
— J