War in Darfur in the context of "African Union"

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the UN system and is the primary organ charged with ensuring international peace and security. Its powers as outlined in the UN Charter include authorizing military action, establishing peacekeeping operations, recommending the admission of new members to the UN General Assembly, approving any changes to the Charter, and enacting international sanctions. Chapter VII of the UN Charter gives the Security Council the power to identify threats to international peace and security and to authorize responses, including the use of force. Security Council resolutions adopted under Chapter VII are binding on UN members and are therefore a source of international law. The Security Council is the only UN body with the authority to issue resolutions that are binding on its member states.

Like the United Nations as a whole, the Security Council was created after World War II in 1945 in the hope of preventing future wars and maintaining world peace, as the League of Nations had been formed following World War I. It held its first session on 17 January 1946 but was largely paralyzed in the following decades by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (and their allies). Nevertheless, it authorized military interventions in the Korean War, the Congo Crisis, and peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, West New Guinea, and the Sinai Peninsula. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, UN peacekeeping efforts increased dramatically in scale, with the Security Council authorizing major military and peacekeeping missions in Kuwait, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Darfur (/dɑːrˈfʊər/ dar-FOOR; Arabic: دار فور, romanized: Dār Fūr, lit. 'Realm of the Fur') is a region of western Sudan. Dār is an Arabic word meaning "home [of]" – the region was named Dardaju (Arabic: دار داجو, romanized: Dār Dājū) while ruled by the Daju, who migrated from Meroë c. 350 AD, and it was renamed Dartunjur (Arabic: دار تنجر, romanized: Dār Tunjur) when the Tunjur ruled the area. Darfur was an independent sultanate for hundreds of years until 1874, when it fell to the Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr. The region was later invaded and incorporated into Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1916.

Because of the War in Darfur between Sudanese government forces and the indigenous population, the region has been in a state of humanitarian emergency and genocide since 2003. The factors include religious and ethnic rivalry, and the rivalry between farmers and herders.

The African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (known by its acronym UNAMID) was a joint African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission formally approved by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1769 on 31 July 2007, to bring stability to the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan while peace talks on a final settlement continue.

Its initial 12-month mandate was extended to 31 July 2010. As of 2008, its budget was approximately US $106 million per month. Its force of about 26,000 personnel began to deploy to the region in October 2007. The 9,000-strong African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), which was previously responsible for peacekeeping, had completely merged into this new force by 31 December 2007.

Sudanese nomadic conflicts are non-state conflicts between rival nomadic tribes in Sudan and, since 2011, South Sudan. These conflicts are common and typically arise over scarce resources such as grazing land, cattle, and drinking water. Tribes involved in these clashes include the Messiria, Maalia, Rizeigat and Bani Hussein Arabic tribes inhabiting Darfur and West Kordofan, as well as the Dinka, Nuer and Murle African ethnic groups inhabiting South Sudan. The conflicts have been intensified by broader wars in the region, particularly the Second Sudanese Civil War, the War in Darfur and the Sudanese conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Over the years, clashes between rival ethnic militias have caused significant casualties and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Notable violent incidents include:

The Darfur genocide was the systematic killing of ethnic Darfuri people during the War in Darfur. The genocide, which was carried out against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict several people for crimes against humanity, rape, forced transfer and torture. An estimated 200,000 people were killed between 2003 and 2005. Other sources estimate that between 2003 and 2008, the conflict resulted in about 300,000 civilian deaths and about 2.7 million displaced civilians.

Khamis Abdallah Abakar (Arabic: خميس عبد الله أبكر; 30 March 1964 – 14 June 2023) also known as Khamis Abakar was a Sudanese politician, marginalized groups rights activist and former army commander who served as the Governor of West Darfur from 2021 until his assassination.

Prior to being governor, Abakar headed a faction of the Sudanese Liberation Movement, which fought the Sudanese military and Janjaweed (later the Rapid Support Forces) during the War in Darfur. In 2020, Abakar's faction of the SLM signed the Juba Peace Agreement, and Abakar was appointed Governor of West Darfur a year later.

The International Criminal Court investigation in Darfur or the situation in Darfur is an ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into criminal acts committed during the War in Darfur. Although Sudan is not a state party to the Rome Statute, the treaty which created the ICC, the situation in Darfur was referred to the ICC's Prosecutor by the United Nations Security Council in 2005. As of June 2019, five suspects remained under indictment by the court: Ahmed Haroun, Ali Kushayb, Omar al-Bashir, Abdallah Banda and Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein. Charges against Bahar Abu Garda were dropped on the basis of insufficient evidence in 2010 and those against Saleh Jerbo were dropped following his death in 2013. In mid-April 2019, Haroun, al-Bashir and Hussein were imprisoned in Sudan as a result of the 2019 Sudanese coup d'état. In early November 2019, the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok stated that al-Bashir would be transferred to the ICC. One of the demands of the displaced people of Darfur visited by Hamdok prior to Hamdok's statement was that "Omar Al Bashir and the other wanted persons" had to be surrendered to the ICC.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF; Arabic: قوات الدعم السريع, romanized: Quwwāt ad-daʿm as-sarīʿ) are a Sudanese paramilitary force formerly operated by the Sudanese government. They originated as auxiliary force militias known as the Janjaweed used by the Sudanese government during the War in Darfur, which the government later restructured as a paramilitary organization in August 2013 under the command of Muhammad Dagalo, the current leader of the RSF, better known as Hemedti. Since 2023, they have been fighting a civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for control of the country, after having taken power along with the SAF in a military coup in 2021. As of 2025, they have established a parallel government with their allies called the Government of Peace and Unity to rule over the territories under their control.

The RSF's motives are widely characterized by academics, journalists, and other local and international observers as Arab supremacist and economic in nature. Their forces have been documented committing war crimes on a vast scale against members of non-Arab ethnicities in Darfur and against Northern Sudanese Arabs (Ja'alin and Shaigiya) in Khartoum state and Gezira State because of their perceived support of the Sudanese Armed Forces. Many of the RSF’s fighters come from Baggara Arab tribes residing in the Darfur region of Sudan, Chad or elsewhere in the “Baggara belt” of the Sahel. Their fighters are largely recruited as mercenaries, with funding coming from the capture of gold mines and patronage by corporate and state actors; the group has also hired out its fighters as mercenaries to fight in conflicts and assist governments outside Sudan. As a result of these activities, the leaders of the RSF have become some of the richest people in the country. The RSF has adopted an anti-Islamist stance in its public relations, and has claimed its new state will be a secular democracy with a bill of rights, but these postures have been met with widespread skepticism by observers given the RSF's behavior on the ground.