Darfur

This article contributes to refining our understanding of how a robust Protection of Civilians mandate in peacekeeping missions may have unintended and harmful consequences for key local actors involved. It focuses specifically on local mission staff employed to collect vital data on human rights abuses, taking the example of the hybrid UN-African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Darfur, UNAMID. It further explores how the UN system lacks a clear policy or automatically built-in mechanisms to prevent potential harm to those on whose local knowledge it relies. While predominately based on interview data with a small number of former UNAMID frontline human rights data-collectors from Darfur, the dynamics unveiled speak to more general issues when interrogating protection of civilians as the central pillar of UN peacekeeping missions, also beyond scenarios where the government of a host-state is hostile to the mission. The article concludes that the protection of local staff should feature prominently in any mission's approach, including an active commitment to withdraw staff from their positions if their security is threatened or compromised.

Accounts of mass atrocities habitually focus on one kind of violence and its archetypal victim, inviting uncritical, ungendered misconceptions: e.g., rape only impacts women; genocide is only about dead, battle-aged men.  We approach collective violence as multiple, intersecting forms of victimization, targeted and experienced through differential social identities, and translated throughout communities.  Through mixed-method analyses of Darfuri refugees' testimonies, we show (a) gendered causes and collective effects of selective killing, sexual violence, and anti-livelihood crimes, (b) how they cause displacement, (c) that they can be genocidal and empirically distinct from non-genocidal forms, (d) how the process of genocidal social destruction can work, and (e) how it does work in Darfur.  Darfuris are victimized through gender roles, yielding a gendered meaning-making process that communicates socially destructive messages through crimes that selectively target other genders.  The collective result is displacement and destruction of Darfuris' ways of life: genocide.

The ‘hybrid' United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was initially hailed as a model for peacekeeping cooperation between the UN and African regional organizations. However, UNAMID soon faced contestation from different stakeholders, and the UN and the AU have now essentially abandoned the hybrid approach. The article reconstructs how the mission’s deteriorating legitimacy relates to changing self-legitimation strategies by the two organizations. The UN and the AU pursued mutual legitimation when establishing UNAMID, but later mobilized historical narratives and diverging normative standards to promote competing authority claims. The article thus advances an understanding of inter-organizational relations as inherently political.

This article draws on the highly disaggregated JMAC data to identify clusters of armed violence in Darfur and model the risk of armed clashes in Darfur in space and time. In doing so, we illustrate the merit of using methods from both descriptive epidemiology and analytical epidemiology to study armed conflict. Peace and conflict researchers increasingly use methods and models of analysis that are being drawn from other disciplines and applied to conflict data. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the applicability of epidemiology to conflict. Yet, despite the renewed interest few have taken conflict or violence as the primary unit of analysis in epidemiological studies of conflict. Drawing on an 18 month sample of data collected by the Joint Mission Analysis Centres (JMAC) to support the work of the United Nations-African Union hybrid mission in Darfur (UNAMID), this article explores the potential and limitations of epidemiological analyses of violence. From our analysis of this data set, we observe three interesting correlations. Firstly, that violence in one locality means it is more likely there will be violence in a neighbouring locality in the next month. Secondly, that the presence of peacekeepers in a locality where violence has occurred means it I less likely that violence will occur in a neighbouring locality, than if peacekeepers were not present. Finally, our third observation is that the presence of peacekeepers in a given locality means it is more likely that violence will occur in that locality. Understanding how conflict occurs in space and time could greatly contribute to the effectiveness of peacekeeping missions. This touches upon the major commonality between the efforts of peacekeeping missions and epidemiology: both are fundamentally concerned with the wellbeing of defined populations and both rely of data to design effective interventions.

Based on fieldwork carried out as part of the Making Peace Keeping Data Work for the International Community Project, this article considers how local perceptions of conflict dynamics interact or fail to interact with incident reporting in UN peacekeeping missions. Interrogating encounters of the hybrid United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) with local populations through interview data collected among Darfurian refugees in Chad, the article posits that localized perceptions of conflict differ in important ways from interpretations by UNAMID. It further argues that in order to effectively carry out the core mandate of protecting civilians, the systematic inclusion of local knowledge into UN-produced data sets is vital for any UN peacekeeping mission.

The millions of survivors who fled from attacks to Sudanese-controlled displacement camps and the refugee camps in Chad are the living ghosts of the Darfur genocide. The 1948 Genocide Convention incorporates extermination by mass killing and elimination through forced migration as two distinct elements of genocide. Genocide scholars and public discourse emphasize extermination by killing, but they give far less explanatory attention to the elimination processes that the Genocide Convention describes as 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction'. (Article II United Nations 1948.) In Darfur, understanding the latter processes requires theoretical attention to the history of food, water, and famine and detailed methodological attention to temporal processes of displacement. We demonstrate how intentional state-led attacks on food and water massively dislodged Black Africans in Darfur from February 2003 to August 2004. The political leadership of the Sudanese state dehumanized and forcibly displaced Black Africans from their homes in Darfur to camps where they largely remain, not only through mass killings and rapes, but also by destroying life-sustaining access to food and water, leading to the genocidal elimination of group life in this region.

_Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan_ is a groundbreaking critical reader that brings together many of the leading thinkers and activists involved in understanding and proactively addressing the situation in Darfur and Sudan more generally. The volume is composed of a range of essays that engage in careful analysis of the historical, geo-political, military, social, environmental, and economic roots of the conflict, and reflect on the contemporary realities shaping the experiences of those living in the region. It is our hope that the volume’s cross-disciplinary offerings will foster a comprehensive, yet nuanced understanding of the root causes, manifestations, and implications of the ongoing conflict, and help generate more informed prospects for a just and comprehensive resolution of the conflict.

Published in conjunction with a major international conference held at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University in February 2008, Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan, is composed of two parts:

Part One includes essays by leading Sudanese academics, intellectuals, activists, civil society representatives, and members of government and Darfur rebel factions, along with essays by scholars based in Europe and the United States. 

The writers include: Musa Adam Abdul-Jalil, Abaker Mohamed Abuelbashar, Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, Al-Tayib Zain Al-Abdin, Alex de Waal, Atta El-Batahani, Kamal El Gizouli, Abdullahi Osman El-Tom, Grant Farred, Adrienne Fricke, Fahima Hashim, Salah Hassan, Amira Khair, Mansour Khalid, Mahmood Mamdani, Carina Ray, Karin Willemse, and Benaiah Yongo-Bure. Part One also features a visual essay by Sudanese photographer Issam A. Abdelhafiez.

Part Two reproduces an array of primary and secondary sources, giving readers access to otherwise hard to find documents that chart critical moments in the war in Darfur and the still unfolding efforts to resolve the conflict.  These documents include manifestos and proposals by the major Darfuri rebel groups, important United Nations resolutions, and excerpts from _The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in Sudan_, along with an annotated bibliography of the major scholarly works on Darfur. 

_Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan_ is essential reading for anyone who is interested in understanding the range of issues that has given rise not only to the war in Darfur, but also the larger interlocking political crisis in Sudan.  It also serves as an important indication of the great extent to which Sudanese people, both in Sudan and the diaspora, are engaged in a critical discussion and vigorous activism around the fate of a nation that hangs in the balance. 

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=5595

This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on political judgment by proposing that the faculty of judgment is essential for responsibly coping with the undeniable fact of distant suffering and the controversial duty of humanitarian intervention. To achieve this end, Mahmood Mamdani’s text ‘The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency’ will be mobilized for a constructive dialogue about which specific conception of political judgment is at stake when we debate a situation like Darfur today. The main claim is that political judgment in times of acute crisis requires the members of the public sphere to strike a precarious balance between two contradictory impulses: the deliberative impulse to enlarge the pool of particular standpoints, and the decisionist impulse to finally bring the conversation to a halt and adopt a normative stance. The theoretical framework for this balanced view of the faculty of judgment will be articulated through a hybridization of Hannah Arendt’s notion of an ‘enlarged mentality’ and Jacques Derrida’s concept of an ‘aporetic decision’.

The focus of the 1948 Genocide Convention on the destruction of groups, in part, encourages consideration of extermination through mass killing and elimination through forced migration and displacement.Yet genocide scholars and the public have given much more attention to extermination than elimination.We seek to remedy this imbalance by giving further attention to the intentional Sudanese state-led attacks on food and water that massively dislodged Black Africans with racially targeted assaults on their homes and villages in Darfur from February 2003 to August 2004. This forced displacement is an important aspect of continuing genocide in Darfur. Much of the response to our paper is concerned with the definition of genocide and with the wisdom of applying this definition of Genocide in Darfur.

Depuis le début de l’année 2003, le conflit qui oppose les rebelles du Darfour aux forces du gouvernement soudanais et aux milices Janjawid a pour conséquence une des crises humanitaires les plus dramatiques de cette dernière décennie.
Faute de mieux, nous devons pour l’instant utiliser les chiffres des Nations Unies dont le mode de calcul est imprécis et donc contestable : ceux- ci faisaient état en mars 2005 d’au moins 180 000 morts2, certaines estima- tions allant jusqu’à 300 000, tandis qu’on compte – chiffres également des Nations Unies, mais vraisemblablement plus fiables – 1,5 million de personnes déplacées à l’intérieur du Darfour et 200 000 réfugiés au Tchad voisin.
D’emblée il apparaît que la guerre a entraîné une sorte de fracture ethnique qui n’a sans doute jamais été aussi nette. S’il existait auparavant une identité « darfourienne » transcendant le fait ethnique, en particulier dans les milieux urbains et parmi les communautés du Darfour vivant à Khartoum, cette identité semble avoir aujourd’hui disparu devant la division de plus en plus forte entre d’un côté les Arabes et de l’autre différents groupes que l’on nommera les « non-Arabes ».

Education is increasingly accepted as an important emergency response, yet conflict environments often do not allow for state provision of education, UN agencies and national and international NGOs seek to fill this gap, often using standardised programmes. This book, written for the CfBT Education Trust/IIEP-UNESCO research partner shop, examines the influences on educational programming in conflict-induced emergencies. It questions whether standardised interventions are appropriate and effective educational responses, and focusses on child-friendly spaces, school-feeding programmes, and pre-packaged education kits. It draws on a review of literature, interviews with over 80 specialists across the globe, and country studies of Sudan, Lebanon, Uganda and Timor-Leste.

A decade ago international peacemakers turned a blind eye when violence in Darfur, Sudan, first escalated into civil war. This article addresses the war's brutal beginnings, using a close reading of internal communications, interviews, and public statements to deepen our understanding of the predicament that key peacemakers found themselves in, and dug themselves into. For a long first year, when the majority of violent deaths in Darfur occurred, peacemakers employed a set of discursive strategies that intentionally depoliticized Darfur's conflict. Despite knowledge to the contrary, peacemakers carefully avoided connections between Darfur and the ongoing north–south peace negotiations they were championing to end Sudan's long second civil war. These ideational moves gave peacemakers a degree of cover for not responding directly to the conflict, but they also shaped the political calculations and opportunities of domestic actors in ways that further enabled armed violence, ultimately leading to policy failure. The problems of peacemaking in Sudan highlight the particular challenges that arise from negotiating peace. Negotiations give words a privileged place in taming the materiality of violence, yet this also leaves peacemakers liable to shaping new trajectories of political violence born out of local dissatisfaction with the prospects for peace.

This paper examines the response options for providing justice and accountability in Darfur as it transitions--hopefully--from war to sustainable peace. In light of the unique cultural and historical characteristics of the conflict examined in this paper as well as developments in international law, the authors suggest that only a combination of international, national and local, and traditional mechanisms for accountability can bring true peace to the people of Darfur and the greater Sudan.

"This paper outlines a research framework to assess attitudes towards peace and conflict and support a form of “grassroots diplomacy” in conflict and post-conflict societies. Based on research in Darfur conducted in 2007-2008, a combination of methods that can be effective tools for addressing this challenge is detailed. The intent is to provide a framework that others interested in research in conflict areas can implement in different scenarios.

This is an updated version of the paper originally published by the International Journal of Communication 2 (2008), 1085-1113"

Diplomatic and peacekeeping initiatives by the international community in emerging cultures in conflict have failed to stem the violence and resolve the underlying conditions. Based primarily on political analysis, such initiatives do not address the underlying causes of the civil war at the individual, family, and tribal levels. This paper examines the psychological and sociological motivations for the violence within and between the Arab and African tribes of Darfur, to include motivation exploration of ethnic defections, failing cultural identity markers, and the effects of cognitive dissonance of the personal and social identities of the Darfur tribes. Research suggests that the identities of the African and Arab tribes are deeply contested over ethnicity, tribalism, religion, race and the generational memory that historical narratives provide. This fundamental identity conflict is overlaid by decades of violent physical, psychological and emotional assault upon the population. The result is a fundamental change of the psycho-sociology of tribal life and threatens disintegration and disestablishment of large group identity. The resulting societal and leadership breakdown of and within the tribes creates conditions of warlord-ism commonly found in ungoverned states such as Somalia. The paper concludes that the international community will ultimately fail unless measures are taken to create conditions for survival of the tribes physically, psychologically and sociologically.

This paper examines the formation of Islamists’ hegemony by shedding light on the alliances they constructed with specific segments of the Sudanese society. More specifically, it aims to provide an analysis of the alliances’ formation with members of the Zaghawa-Darfurian ethnic community, with a special focus on economic activities. I will argue that changes in the alliances -induced by the Islamists' rise to power- explain why different groups within the Zaghawa ethnic community are now supporting the rebellion in Darfur.

Dans cet article, il s’agit d’analyser les trajectoires individuelles de différents segments des communautés zaghawa du Darfour. Nous nous interrogeons sur leur place dans la construction de l’alliance hégémonique islamiste en étudiant l’évolution conjointe des conjonctions d’intérêts que ces groupes forment avec le mouvement islamique, et ce spécialement dans les dispositifs économiques. Cela permet de comprendre leur délitement au cours des années 1990 et le rapprochement des segments qui conduit à leur réunion dans une opposition commune au régime et leur soutien à la rébellion au Darfour.
--

Is global Warming the root cause of the Darfur crisis ? Scientific research at the Risk of denying Complexity
The Darfur crisis is admittedly the result of a growing discrepancy between population and resources which has led to heightening tension between tribal groups over access to land and water. The degradation of the environment has been observed for over half a century, due to a large extent to the lack of rural development efforts. The crisis that erupted in 2003 is tehrefore the outcome of the revolt of the population against the neglect and exploitation of Darfur by the Nile riverine elites. however, the flight of the villagers who escaped massacre by the army and janjaweed militias only aimed at ensuring their immediate Survival.The displaced persons camps didn't provide any possibility of continuing agro-pastoral activities. The alternation of climate cycles does Indeed show a tendency  toward the diminution of rains. but this has occurred several times in the past, and Nothing allows it to be linked at this stage with global warming. The emergency displacements of population occuring during peak food crises as in 1984-85 or during war operations as in 2003-04, can therefore rather be attributed yo the economic and social stagnation of which this region has been the victim.

L’affaire de L’Arche de Zoé en est le signe le plus patent : l’humanitaire a imperceptiblement mué – perdant son âme militante pour les uns, entrant résolument dans l’ère de la professionnalisation pour les autres. On est frappé par le fossé qui sépare la grille de lecture du conflit du Darfour par les militants 1 de sa « cause » et celle des humanitaires et experts de terrain : les premiers décrivent le conflit comme relevant d’un « génocide » de populations qui seraient africaines et donc « indigènes » par un gouvernement et ses milices supplétives (les Janjawids), unis par une identité arabe commune ; les seconds y voient une imbrication de conflits d’ampleurs diverses (du plus local à l’inter- national) aux causes multiples (environnementales, politiques, économiques).
Au-delà des débats qui agitent depuis longtemps le microcosme de l’urgence (droit d’ingérence ou neutralité), la résistance des humanitaires à se lancer sur la pente de la condamnation des « génocidaires » et de l’intervention militaro-humanitaire au nom de valeurs universelles va de pair avec une volonté de comprendre le contexte dans toute sa complexité. Cette volonté a marqué la démarche d’Action contre la faim (ACF) au Darfour. Arrivée au début de l’année 2004 à la faveur du déploiement de la plus importante opération humanitaire au monde, ACF construit rapidement ce qui sera pendant cinq ans l’une de ses principales missions.
La « prise en compte du contexte » est pensée en deux temps : tout d’abord, une tentative de l’appréhender, notamment d’un point de vue ethnographique, puis, une volonté de mieux y adapter les programmes. L’idée de cette seconde étape est d’intervenir, en marge de programmes assez standards et concentrés dans les grands camps de déplacés, dans des zones rurales auprès de populations déplacées et résidentes, appartenant à différents groupes ethniques et donc pas forcément considérées comme les victimes du conflit. L’intervention humanitaire est aussi censée contribuer à mettre fin à des conflits locaux – conformément aux souhaits d’un des principaux bailleurs, l’Union européenne.
Le présent article décrit les premiers pas de la démarche – presque initiatique – d’ACF en vue d’appliquer cette approche à des projets hydrauliques et agricoles au sud du massif du Jebel Marra. Il présente les enseignements d’une étude réalisée pour l’ONG en août-septembre 2008 qui a révélé les décalages existant entre les grilles de lecture du conflit et les réalités du terrain : décalages dans l’analyse de la question foncière et dans les tentatives dangereuses de construire une carte ethnique définie de la région. Il souligne aussi les dilemmes qu’entraîne cette nouvelle analyse du contexte pour les acteurs internationaux présents dans la région : comment équilibrer l’intervention en faveur des différents groupes sans risquer de valider l’occupation de terres ? L’intervention doit-elle restaurer les équilibres d’avant guerre alors que par nature elle accélère les processus enclenchés par le conflit, notamment l’urbanisation ?

Using a comparative case study between Rwanda and Darfur, this research examines the relationship between three main factors and the recurrent failure of humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War Era, particularly in Africa, in spite of the hopes associated with it since the beginning of the 1990s. Those factors are: the interest-based, racist selective state practice, the inadequacy of the humanitarian discourse, and the lack of an impartial international body responsible for implementation and monitoring of intervention. Through examining the two cases, the research highlights the failure of the international community to address the humanitarian disaster in Rwanda and the preliminary failure in the case of Darfur. But the case of Darfur has highlighted the developments that have started to take place within humanitarian intervention doctrine and practice. It is argued that for these developments to continue and for humanitarian disasters to be dealt with differently in the future, the three factors within humanitarian action presented by this research should be dealt with vigorously and wholeheartedly.

Ravaged by years of conflict and environmental decline, Darfur’s economy has been unable to create sufficient opportunities for youth, creating a link between social instability and high concentration of youth without productive employment. In 2011, the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) designed a community stabilization and violence reduction programme to bridge a critical gap between the increasing ‘youth bulge’ and the government's capacity to deliver youth empowerment and job creation solutions to youth in Darfur, leading to militarization of youth. The programme offers vocational skills training and temporary employment of youth through implementation of community-based labour intensive projects (CLIPs). Youth are targeted in particular, since they are an essential part of the solution to resolving the conflict in Darfur. Youth tend to be directly involved in hostilities and are seen to be most likely to return to the battlefield. At the same time, youth are often the community members most open to engaging in post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding activities. Since the conception of the programme in 2011, a total of 58 projects were implemented in 45 communities, and directly targeted over 9,000 youth. In a situation where the peace agreement is non-inclusive and the level of violence against unarmed civilians is high, CLIPs have played an important role in community stabilization and violence reduction in Darfur, building trust, contributing to a secure environment and helping build the foundation for longer term peace and development. As recognition of its contribution to peace and stability in Darfur, in October 2014, UNAMID’s CLIPs programme received the UN 21 Award for Outstanding Vision.

In this contribution I compare different situations in which people try to find and, if possible, remain in a condition of security in moments of insecurity and disruption. I will show that the relational concept of displacement economies, laid out in the introduction by Amanda Hammar, perfectly fits the way different actors engage in historically entangled, boundary crossing, and creative mixing of economic survival strategies that I encountered in the Darfur-Chad borderlands. Indeed, one essential element of such activities is firmly economic. By building upon the knowledge of neighbours and other villagers in dealing with a crisis some people develop practices of survival, which nonetheless also means having to put up with remaining risks and dangers. Others rely on systems of survival created through foreign interpretations of the crisis situation, as in the case of international models of emergency assistance and development aid. International models might provide for higher security from violence, for instance in the guarded surroundings of a refugee camp. But they also bear the risk of disconnecting people from local opportunities to access land and, thus, from the opportunity to build up an independent future security that comes close to what they had to leave behind in the war.

Konflik bersenjata Darfur, dimulai pada Februari 2003. Pada tahun 1983, Selatan dipimpin oleh gerakan People's Liberation Sudan atau (SPLM) Sudan People's Liberation Movement, dan telah dipersenjatai, Liberation Army of South Sudan (SPLA) Sudan People's Liberation Army, bergabung dengan pemberontakan ketika pemerintah Sudan membatalkan perjanjian pengaturan otonomi. Setidaknya 1,5 juta orang telah kehilangan rumah mereka dan lebih dari 4 juta orang telah mengungsi selama 22 tahun karena perang gerilya. Dalam penulisan hukum ini, peneliti mencoba mengkaji dan menganalisis persoalan bagaimana peran UNAMID dalam menyelesaikan konflik bersenjata antara kelompok pemberontak di Darfur oleh pemerintah Sudan. Data yang digunakan adalah bahan hukum primer yang terdiri dari Piagam Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa, Piagam Organisasi Persatuan Afrika, Undang-undang Konstitutif Uni Afrika, Dewan Keamanan Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa 1769. serta data sekunder yang terdiri dari buku, jurnal, artikel , tesis, dan topik penelitian terkait internet. United Nations/African Union Hybrid Operation Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), dibentuk pada tanggal 31 Juli 2007, dan bertindak berdasarkan Bab VII Piagam Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa yang diputuskan oleh resolusi Dewan Keamanan PBB nomor 1769. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian dan analisis, peneliti menyimpulkan bahwa pembentukan badan khusus PBB dan Uni Afrika bahwa UNAMID (United Nations Mission In Darfur) telah berjalan sesuai amanat yang diberikan walaupun banyak kendala baik dari faktor eksternal maupun internal.

This article examines efforts of intervention and conflict resolution made by local formations of civil society in Darfur. Two main themes are explored here: the forms of intervention and conflict resolution offered on a local level and the argument for incorporating this local element. Although local formations in Darfur take shapes other than those recognized in western literature and societies as being 'civil society', recent interactions between these local formations, the state and the international community have produced something entirely different. Efforts made by local formations in Darfur to resolve conflicts are to be introduced and critically analysed. The purpose is to clearly distinguish traditional mechanisms of conflict resolution in Darfur as well as what communities have to offer after their reformulation through interaction with the modern state and international community. The division between traditional and modern here are entirely organizational and for establishing basic conceptual clarity. The reality depicted by fieldwork for this research has been entirely complicated, which this paper seeks to highlight. The paper provides an overview of interventions and conflict resolution mechanisms by local formations in Darfur and analyses the significance of integrating them in attempts to resolve conflicts in the region.

In recent years many members of the international community have increasingly appeared to accept the narrative espoused by Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir’s regime that the Darfur conflict was over. Darfurians, including civilian victims of government-related forces and combatants opposed to the government, have reacted to the internal and international paralysis that has resulted from the adoption of this narrative with increased levels of mobility,1 moving or attempting to move both to and between neighbouring African countries and to Europe.
This report analyses several components of this increased mobility. Darfur rebel groups have proved to be particularly mobile in their quest for foreign support, rear bases, and refuge from increasingly successful government counter-insurgency tactics. This holds true not only in Sudan itself, but also for countries neighbouring Sudan, that is Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan, and, more recently, Libya. In Libya these armed groups are able to operate in a familiar desert terrain where lawlessness since the fall of the Qaddafi regime has allowed them to participate in various cross- border smuggling activities. Darfur’s non-Arab civilians, many of whom have been displaced since 2013, have been forced to cope with diminished international aid both in Darfur itself and in refugee camps in Chad. This, coupled with pressure to return to what remains of their homes, has prompted many to move further, joining former rebel kinsmen in gold-mining activities across the Sahara, and attempting to find sources of income and safety in Libya. These non-Arab Darfurians are increasingly going beyond Libya to Europe, where those who survive the perilous Mediterranean crossing often have a good chance of being granted asylum.

The article presents the records collected by the Darfur Atrocities Documentation Team (ADT), which has proved the occurrence of genocide in Darfur. It describes the discussion of the academic community and often conflicting political positions on the issue. I attempted to analyse the results of the work of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur (ICID), appointed at the request of the United States by the UN Security Council, which examined the numerous violations of international law in the province; but did not express an opinion whether or not genocide took place in Darfur. I have confronted the collected evidence of crimes committed in Darfur with the Convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide, which obliges the international community to intervene when genocide is proved to be happening. The conflict in Darfur has been presented as an example of the ineffectiveness of the response of the international community to genocide. Therefore, an analysis was carried out on the means of effective prevention of genocide, which can be used in future prevention of crimes in the other regions of the world.

Abstract: This work analyzes the work of International Criminal Court focusing on alleged Darfur genocide. We are trying to reassess allegations of African public which claim that ICC is biassed towards Africa, selective and implementing double standards. Further more they claim that the Court is, in fact, an instrument of new Western imperialism. The key moment which have broken the ICC-Africa relationship beyond repair is arrest warrant for Sudan president Omar Al Bashir. We are questioning the legality and legitimacy of that warrant. Моreover, in order to prove or deny the objectivity of the court we are analizing the financing of the ICC and its relationship with the NGO sector. We examine the effects of the court decisions on the peace and reconciliation in the region.
Keywords: Darfur, ICC, Sudan, genocide, Al-Bashir.