United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has squarely placed the blame for the ongoing crisis in Sudan and the suffering of its civilian population on the country’s warring military leaders and their international supporters.

Addressing the media at the end of the 7th African Union-United Nations Annual Conference in New York on November 28, 2023, Guterres, alongside African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki, responded to a journalist’s question about the failure of the AU and UN to halt the conflict and the atrocities against civilians in Sudan.

The UN chief pointed the finger directly at two Sudanese generals – Abdel Fattah al-Burhan Commander in Chief of the Sudanese army and his rival Mohamed Hadan Daglo RSF leader -, accusing them of disregarding the interests of their people and instead engaging in a power struggle that has resulted in massacres akin to “the one of the Masalit” in West Darfur.

Guterres further highlighted the Sudanese generals’ obstruction of AU-brokered efforts to achieve a democratic transition and their subsequent overthrow of the civilian government, opting instead to pursue their own power ambitions.

“After that, they fight each other and probably with the support in money and weapons by some others and then people say it’s the fault of the African Union or the United Nations,” Guterres emphasized.

In a stark rebuke of the generals and their foreign backers, Guterres declared, “I think it’s time to call a spade a spade. This is the fault of those that sacrificed the interests of their people for a pure struggle for power, and they’re the ones that support them based on considerations that I would not like to comment on today.”

This marks the first public statement by an international official condemning the involvement of external actors in the Sudanese conflict, which has displaced millions of Sudanese citizens and resulted in war crimes and grave human rights violations.