Sudan in the US Trafficking in Persons Report: She Has Undone Her Own Work, Unravelling It Strand by Strand!

Sudnhorizon – Mohamed Osman Adam
The US Department of State recently issued its 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report, which classified Sudan as a Tier 3 country.
In the section on Sudan, the report’s overall assessment concluded that the situation in Sudan had not improved this year compared with the previous year. One striking feature this time is the use of the term “SAF-affiliated government”. This description betrays a clearly preconceived and politicised view—even though the report as a whole is little more than a political exercise. Is it merely speculation to suggest that this change has been driven by recent political developments?
No. Last year, the Sudanese government was not described as “SAF-affiliated”. So, what has changed this year to warrant abandoning terms that had been used for two or three consecutive years, such as “Khartoum government”, “government in Khartoum” or “de facto government”? The answer is simple: the aim is to strip the Sudanese government of all legitimacy and place it on an equal footing with other parties and entities—specifically, the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia—in order to undermine Khartoum’s argument against treating the country’s national army as equivalent to these forces.
This move has been driven by developments within the United Nations Security Council and the position adopted on extending sanctions. Now that the sanctions have been extended for only two months, without any expansion of their scope, Mr Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump’s Senior Adviser for Africa and Arab Affairs, will seek to use every available means to exert pressure on the Sudanese leadership and force it to submit.
This process began with the UN Human Rights Council’s renewal of the group of experts’ mandate, followed by this Trafficking in Persons Report. Military pressure will, of course, accompany these measures, including looking the other way—at the very least—to the atrocities committed by the rebel RSF in El Obeid, in western Sudan, and in the Damazin area in the far south-west, as well as the surrounding areas. The RSF will intensify its use of drones and inflict further harm on civilians, with these developments ultimately being used to justify expanding the scope of sanctions and imposing a no-fly zone and a ban on the use of drones.
What does the report contain?
The report opens with a forceful and direct statement:
“The Government of Sudan, affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces, does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons and is not making significant efforts to do so; therefore, Sudan remained classified as Tier 3.”
One might wonder why this is the case. However, a closer examination of the report reveals the following explanation:
“Despite the lack of significant efforts, the SAF-affiliated government took some steps to address human trafficking, including the National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking continuing to work on developing a national action plan.”
The report did not stop there. It also acknowledged—albeit somewhat grudgingly, and these are its own words—that:
“The ongoing conflict throughout the country continued to hamper anti-trafficking operations and hindered the SAF-affiliated government’s ability to collect necessary law enforcement statistics.”
After pointing to the government’s failure to take concrete action and the failure of law-enforcement agencies to bring any perpetrators or criminals to trial, the report stated the following—and this, too, is a direct quotation:
“The Ministry of Interior’s Anti-Trafficking Unit (SAF-affiliated) was responsible for enforcing relevant laws, but government institutions, including law enforcement agencies, continued to face significant operational constraints due to the ongoing conflict, which limited their effectiveness in combating human trafficking.”
The report then added—and here we are referring not to the Khartoum government, but to the US Department of State’s own report—that:
“The SAF-affiliated government established and funded specialised committees to investigate human rights and international law violations, including human trafficking cases, to investigate crimes committed primarily in areas under RSF control and therefore beyond the reach of SAF-affiliated officials during the reporting period.”
If that is the case, one would expect the report to explain or acknowledge the constraints, rather than use them as grounds for reprimand and condemnation. Reason, logic and sound argument dictate that a conclusion should reflect and follow from its premises, not contradict them. Yet the premises point in one direction, while the conclusion goes the other, as we say in Sudanese colloquial Arabic.
This brings to mind the familiar analogy of someone being thrown into the sea with his hands tied and then being ordered to swim. That is precisely the impression one gets when reading a report that blames the “SAF-affiliated government” for failing to prevent militias from recruiting children as soldiers!
Yes, the report itself makes this accusation. Here is what it says:
“The SAF-controlled government did not report any efforts to prevent the recruitment and use of child soldiers within its units during the reporting period, and it was unable to prevent the RSF and other armed groups from recruiting or using child soldiers.”
Does this not show that the report was hastily drafted and rapidly amended to align with recent developments, then tailored to serve the purpose I outlined earlier?
There is another point worth mentioning before concluding—although there are many others for anyone wishing to read the report from a political perspective, which is not our purpose here. The report conspicuously avoided, and failed utterly, to mention documented cases and reports issued by international and non-governmental human rights organisations confirming the RSF’s involvement in human trafficking and sexual exploitation. It also ignored documented open-source reports, including video footage showing children recruited into the ranks of these forces, if we define a child as anyone under the age of eighteen. One need only watch any video published by the RSF to see the large numbers of child soldiers clearly visible among its ranks.
Whenever the report refers to the RSF, it does so hesitantly and guarded, seemingly to soften the contrast with its obvious bias against the Sudanese Armed Forces. When the report includes a statement such as:
“Observers reported thousands of allegations of fighters recruiting and using children as soldiers since April 2023, with children forced into forced labour, sexual slavery or combat roles such as reconnaissance or serving as human shields”,
it fails to identify precisely who was responsible or which party was involved. Unsurprisingly, the report conspicuously avoids naming the RSF.
My assessment, having read this report, is that it lacks impartiality and professionalism. It is saturated with political bias and deliberately directed towards serving a clear objective.
The report contains contradictions that undermine its credibility. It accuses the “SAF-affiliated government” and then goes on to explain that the situation results from the war, while failing to clarify that this was not an official policy of that government. Under such circumstances, it is unreasonable to blame the government for something it is unable to do. Does the RSF militia take its orders from the Khartoum government?
Once again, the report failed utterly to mention even once the success of police and security forces in eastern Sudan in foiling human-smuggling operations and freeing dozens of victims. Nor did it mention the injuries and deaths suffered by Sudanese law-enforcement personnel in Kassala and around Gedaref as they confronted the smugglers. These incidents occurred recently and fall within the report’s reporting period.
The report has, in effect, undone with its own hands what it had built—or, as the English expression goes, “it has shot itself in the foot”.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=18842