The CID002567 Footprint: Tracking Sudan’s Gold Through Global Supply Chains,” report, published in April 2026 by the Centre for Environmental and Social Studies (CESS), an independent Sudanese research centre, offers a critical reframing of the war in Sudan. Rather than presenting the conflict as a purely domestic struggle between armed actors, it situates it within a broader transnational political economy shaped by natural resources, global markets, and corporate supply chains.
At its core, the report argues that Sudan’s war economy is not isolated but structurally embedded in global systems of production and exchange.
Since the outbreak of war in April 2023, gold has emerged as the central pillar of war finance in Sudan.
With the collapse of formal export systems and the weakening of state institutions, gold production and trade did not diminish, instead, they were reconfigured. Armed actors, informal traders, and cross-border networks assumed control over extraction, transport, and export, creating a parallel economy that operates outside formal state regulation while remaining deeply integrated into global markets.
This duality, informal in governance yet global in function, is one of the report’s key analytical contributions. Sudanese gold, often extracted under conditions of violence and coercion, does not remain at the margins of the global economy. It enters international supply chains, becomes part of industrial inputs, and is ultimately incorporated into consumer goods and technological products. In this sense, the war economy is not peripheral, it is absorbed into the core circuits of global capitalism.
The Sudan Gold Refinery in Khartoum, identified by the smelter code CID002567, serves as the central case through which the report develops its argument. Established in 2012, the refinery was originally a cornerstone of Sudan’s formal gold sector. It enabled the state to regulate gold exports, monitor production, and secure foreign currency revenues, especially following the loss of oil income after South Sudan’s independence.
However, this institutional role collapsed when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized the refinery in May 2023. During the takeover, large quantities of gold and silver were reportedly looted, with an estimated value exceeding $150 million. This event marked a turning point, not only in terms of control over a strategic asset, but in the broader transformation of the gold sector from a state-regulated industry into a militarized economic domain.
The report reinforces this claim through satellite imagery analysis covering the period from 2023 to 2025. The images show a clear trajectory of destruction, from a fully operational industrial site to a severely damaged and ultimately non-functional facility.
By 2025, there is no evidence of ongoing industrial activity. This visual evidence is crucial, as it establishes that the refinery could not have been producing or refining gold during this period.
Yet, despite its physical destruction and operational shutdown, the refinery continues to appear in global supply chain disclosures. This contradiction forms the central puzzle of the report: how can a non-operational, conflict-affected facility remain embedded in international supply networks?
The answer lies not in isolated errors, but in systemic weaknesses in global due diligence frameworks. The report argues that existing mechanisms governing responsible mineral sourcing, including those aligned with OECD guidelines, are insufficiently robust in high-risk contexts. Supply chains are complex, multi-layered, and often opaque, allowing materials to be misattributed, relabeled, or blended in ways that obscure their origins.
This structural opacity enables conflict-linked gold to circulate within global markets without triggering adequate scrutiny. The continued listing of the Sudan Gold Refinery in corporate disclosures is therefore not an anomaly, but a symptom of a broader governance failure.
Volkswagen is presented as a key case study.
In its 2024 Responsible Raw Materials Report, the company included the Sudan Gold Refinery among the smelters associated with its supply chain. While Volkswagen maintains that such inclusion does not necessarily indicate direct sourcing, the report challenges this position. According to international standards, companies bear responsibility for identifying and mitigating risks throughout their supply chains, regardless of their complexity.
The Volkswagen case illustrates a critical tension between corporate compliance narratives and the realities of global sourcing. On the one hand, companies emphasize due diligence and responsible sourcing commitments. On the other, the persistence of non-compliant, conflict-linked smelters within their reporting frameworks suggests gaps in implementation. The report argues that supply chain complexity should not function as a shield against accountability.
Beyond individual corporations, the report maps the transnational routes through which Sudanese gold is smuggled and reintegrated into global markets. Gold is transported across borders into neighbouring countries such as Chad and South Sudan, where it enters informal trade circuits. From there, it is re-exported, often through Dubai, which functions as a major hub for gold trade. This occurs despite the relatively low share of gold exported directly from Sudan to Dubai, as highlighted in a previous report by Atar.
In these intermediary markets, gold is effectively “laundered,” its origin obscured through processes of aggregation, refining, and re-export. Once reintroduced into formal trade channels, it becomes indistinguishable from legally sourced gold. This process highlights how regional trade hubs play a crucial role in bridging conflict economies and global markets.
The implications of this system are profound. The war in Sudan is sustained not only by local actors, but by a network of economic relationships that extend far beyond its borders. Gold is exchanged for liquidity, weapons, and logistical support, creating a feedback loop in which resource extraction finances continued violence.
These dynamic challenges conventional distinctions between local and global responsibility. The report makes clear that war finance is embedded in transnational economic systems, and that companies, financial institutions, and regulatory bodies all play a role, whether directly or indirectly, in enabling these flows.
Importantly, the report situates these findings within a broader critique of global mineral governance. While frameworks such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance and the Responsible Minerals Initiative are designed to prevent conflict financing, their effectiveness is limited by voluntary compliance, uneven enforcement, and the inherent complexity of supply chains.
In practice, this means that the burden of due diligence is often diluted across multiple actors, reducing accountability. Companies may rely on suppliers, who in turn rely on intermediaries, creating layers of separation that make verification difficult. This diffusion of responsibility allows systemic risks to persist.
At a deeper level, the report points to a structural contradiction within global capitalism. The same system that promotes responsible sourcing also incentivizes cost reduction and efficiency, often at the expense of thorough verification. As a result, the social and human costs of resource extraction, including violence and environmental degradation, are externalized.
In the Sudanese context, this manifests as a war economy that is both locally destructive and globally profitable. Gold extracted under conditions of conflict becomes part of international value chains, contributing to corporate revenues and industrial production. The violence that enables this extraction is effectively absorbed into the economic system as an invisible cost.
The report also notes that gold is not the only resource implicated in this dynamic. Other commodities, including gum arabic, may also be integrated into exchange networks that support war finance. This diversification enhances the resilience of the war economy, making it less vulnerable to disruptions in any single sector.
In response to these challenges, the report calls for a shift in approach. Rather than focusing solely on humanitarian responses or political negotiations, it emphasizes the need to target the economic foundations of the conflict. This includes increasing transparency in supply chains, strengthening due diligence requirements, and imposing stricter accountability on corporations and financial institutions.
One of the key recommendations is to raise the cost of trading in conflict-linked gold. This can be achieved through regulatory measures, public scrutiny, and legal action. By making it politically, legally, and reputationally costly for companies to engage with such resources, the incentives that sustain the war economy can be altered.
Civil society is identified as a crucial actor in this process. Through monitoring, reporting, and advocacy, non-state actors can play a role in exposing supply chain linkages and pressuring companies to change their practices. In this sense, knowledge production becomes a form of political intervention.
Ultimately, the report’s central argument is that ending the war in Sudan requires more than addressing its immediate political causes. It demands confronting the transnational economic systems that finance and sustain it. As long as conflict-linked gold continues to flow into global markets, the material basis for war will remain intact.
Stopping these flows is not simply a moral imperative, it is a structural necessity. Without disrupting the economic circuits that convert natural resources into instruments of war, efforts to achieve peace are likely to remain incomplete.
In reframing the war as a function of global supply chains, the report shifts the focus from isolated actors to interconnected systems. It challenges policymakers, corporations, and civil society to recognize their role within these systems and to act accordingly.
The question, therefore, is no longer only who is fighting the war, but who is enabling it, and how those enabling mechanisms can be dismantled.
