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The United States on Monday urged the United Nations Security Council to expand an embargo on arms to all of Sudan as a civil war raging in the country for four years is killing at least 59,000 people and forcing 13 million others from their homes and from facing possible famine in much of the country.

Sudan’s civil war, now in its fourth year, is being fueled by “tremendous and increasing amount of military support to both warring parties” from “numerous external actors,” said Massad Boulos, Senior Adviser to the President for Arab and African Affairs. The external military and financial support to both parties is a major cause of the current bloodshed, Boulos told the UN Security Council on Monday.

The conflict is between Sudan’s national army and the RSF (a paramilitary force). Egypt has been a key supporter of the Sudanese military. The UAE has been repeatedly accused by U.N. experts and human rights bodies of arming the RSF. However, the UAE has always denied these allegations.

The US has put forward a Security Council draft resolution to extend the existing embargo of arms to all of Sudan, applying it to all armed groups, fighting on Sudanese soil. Specifically, the prohibition of sale, transfer, export, and provision of financial and technical support for the use of drones and of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is laid out in detail. Experts monitoring the conflict have seen both Sudan’s Armed Forces and the RSF dramatically escalate their drone warfare over the past year.

Two years ago, a U.N.-backed panel of human rights investigators called for an expanded, nationwide arms embargo after they said they had found evidence of a pattern of atrocities in Darfur, where the worst violence in the conflict has occurred. But the request for an embargo was rejected by the Security Council due to disagreements among the major powers.

The number of people displaced by the war in Sudan now exceeds those displaced by other conflicts around the world, making it the world’s largest internal displacement crisis, according to the United Nations. A large portion of the country is sliding into famine.

The use of US diplomatic capital at the UN to press for action by third country arms suppliers, reflects the administration’s overall foreign policy approach of seeking to hold external actors accountable for their role in enabling and fueling conflicts across regions.

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