Darfur genocide

In 2003, rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement attacked government targets in Darfur, a region of western Sudan, demanding an end to marginalization of its non-Arab communities, such as the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The government of Omar al-Bashir responded with aerial bombing and by arming Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, which together attacked and destroyed hundreds of villages. The UN estimated about 300,000 deaths by 2008, with other estimates from about 200,000 to 400,000, many from disease and hunger in camps, and more than two million people were displaced.²³

Tensions over land and water between herders and farmers had sharpened during Sahel droughts, and Sudan's Islamist military government, in power since 1989, built its rule on Arab-identified elites. In 2004 the United States called the killing genocide; a UN commission in 2005 found crimes against humanity but did not conclude genocidal intent. The UN Security Council referred Darfur to the International Criminal Court, which in 2009 and 2010 issued arrest warrants for Bashir, the first for a sitting head of state, including on genocide charges. Bashir was ousted in 2019, and violence returned to Darfur in Sudan's 2023 war.¹⁴⁵