Canada Must End Complicity with War in Sudan

Over the past year, the Canadian government has undertaken aggressive efforts to strengthen and expand economic ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while it directly enables the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan. The government had been aggressively pursuing the deal, also known as a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), since Prime Minister Carney’s November 2025 visit to the UAE. The Canadian government cannot escape the reality that continuing to arm and deepen economic ties with the UAE means deepening complicity in one of the most devastating conflicts and genocides of the twenty-first century.

By rushing to finalize this deal, Ottawa signals its refusal to acknowledge the UAE’s documented role as the principal backer of the RSF: the militia committing genocide in Sudan. CEPA must not be ratified. Canada must impose an arms embargo on the UAE. Cut ties now.

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Weaving Our Worlds has signed this open letter:

We, the undersigned, condemn in the strongest possible terms the Canadian government’s aggressive efforts to strengthen and expand economic ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while it directly enables the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s reprehensible visit to Abu Dhabi for major trade negotiations in November of last year did nothing but further cement Canada’s complicity in the UAE-backed atrocities in Sudan.

Carney also began negotiations with UAE leaders for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), a free trade deal that will further entrench Canada’s economic relations with the UAE for decades to come. The Canadian government anticipates this agreement will double bilateral trade with the UAE from $3.4 billion to $7 billion over the next decade. By moving forward with these negotiations, without any acknowledgment or meaningful action to stop the UAE’s support of the RSF, Canada makes it abundantly clear that it has no intention to prevent genocide in Sudan.

The Canadian government cannot escape the reality that continuing to arm and deepen economic ties with the UAE means deepening complicity in one of the most  devastating conflicts and genocides of the twenty-first century. For more than three years, Canada has refused to leverage its economic and diplomatic influence with the UAE in any way to end the staggering scale of atrocities in Sudan.

From Turtle Island to Palestine to Sudan, the Canadian state proves again and again its commitment to capitalism is stronger than its commitment to international human rights.

To stop the catastrophic war and genocide in Sudan, we echo the call from Sudanese revolutionaries: the RSF militia must be disarmed and dissolved. Canada must take every available action to cut off weapons and external support to the RSF.

We demand that Canada:

1. Immediately impose an arms embargo on the UAE: Canada must suspend all existing arms export permits to the UAE and ban all future permits. This embargo must apply to all weapons, military goods, and related components, without exception. Canada must ensure that Canadian-made military goods are not contributing to atrocities in Sudan. The government must also close the remaining loopholes in Canada’s arms export regime to comply with the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). 
2. Fully investigate and prosecute all Canadian companies complicit in arming the RSF: Canada must immediately investigate and prosecute Canadian companies that have manufactured weapons that have violated the arms embargo on Sudan, including Streit Group and Sterling Cross Defense Systems. Canada must enforce the Bill C-47 passed in 2019 after signing ATT. This bill requires Canadian companies to obtain a Canadian permit for brokering arms sales between foreign countries (ex. from UAE to Sudan)
3. Urgently deliver humanitarian aid to Sudan: Canada must help address the massive shortfall in humanitarian aid funding to Sudan by increasing aid and by supporting the opening up of safe corridors for aid to reach those in need. Canada must work to partner directly with frontline Sudanese-led aid networks, including the award-winning Emergency Response Rooms, which operate in high-conflict zones many NGOs will not.  Canada must demand immediate, unrestricted humanitarian access to besieged cities facing extreme hunger, including El Fasher, Kadugli and Dilling. 
4. Establish a special, expedited immigration program for Sudan: Canada must establish a special and expedited immigration program with uncapped intake, broad eligibility beyond immediate family, waived fees, and accelerated processing. The conditional nature of current measures reflects long-standing anti-Black and anti-African discrimination in Canada’s immigration response to crises in Africa. Canada must expedite applications under the family-based permanent residence pathway for people affected by the conflict in Sudan. Canada must also expedite current refugee claims inside Canada, as well as the government-assisted refugee program.  
5. Suspend economic relations & halt trade deals with the UAE: Canada must immediately halt all trade negotiations currently underway, including halting the planned ratification of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA); and suspend signed agreements such as the Canada-UAE Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) in response to the UAE’s continued support of the RSF in Sudan.
6. Support an immediate ceasefire: Support calls for the creation of an alternative peace process that centers grassroots (as opposed to civilian elite) civil society actors and organizations, like Resistance Committees, rather than the perpetrators of mass violence and genocide and their foreign backers. By continuing to only center the warring parties and their civilian elite representatives in ceasefire negotiations, the path towards civilian rule becomes ever more elusive.