Accountability for the Darfur Genocide By: Blake Querio
Accountability for the Darfur Genocide
By Blake Querio
A young girl leaves her village in Darfur to gather firewood for her family’s evening meal. On her way, she is ambushed by armed men, who were members of the Janjaweed militia backed by Sudanese government forces. They beat her, then march her back to her village, where they force her family out of their home. In front of her and her mother, the soldiers execute her father and brother. The girl and her mother are then subjected to brutal sexual violence before their village is burned to the ground. Those who survive are driven into displacement camps or left to die in the desert.
This scene was not unique: it was repeated thousands of times across Darfur between 2003 and 2005, during what the United Nations and the International Criminal Court have recognized as a genocide against Darfur’s non-Arab populations.[1]
These men are the Janjaweed, a Sudanese Arab militia that operated with the full support of Sudan’s then government during the Darfur conflict, which unfolded in the context of the Second Sudanese Civil War.[2]Darfur, a region in western Sudan, is home to a mosaic of ethnic groups historically divided, though simplistically, into two categories: Arab and Black African. [3] Within these categories exist dozens of distinct tribes and clans.[4] For generations, Darfur’s communities lived in a fragile coexistence, but deep-rooted tensions over land, water, and political marginalization steadily worsened, particularly as drought and desertification intensified throughout the late twentieth century.[5]
By the early 2000s, these pressures erupted into violence. President Omar al-Bashir and his government in Khartoum implemented policies that armed and emboldened Arab-identified militias like the Janjaweed.[6] The government supplied them with weapons, funding, and aerial support, framing their campaign as a counterinsurgency against non-Arab rebel groups demanding greater autonomy and inclusion.[7] In practice, however, this campaign became a systematic assault on non-Arab civilians—marked by mass killings, sexual violence, and the destruction of entire villages.[8] These acts were later recognized by the international community as genocide.[9]
The Janjaweed’s crimes were brutal and widespread. They targeted civilians, burned villages, and executed those attempting to flee.[10] Among the most horrific aspects of the violence was genocidal rape, a deliberate tactic of war and terror. Women and girls were subjected to repeated sexual assaults, often after witnessing the killing of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons.[11] Survivors were frequently displaced, left without families, and stigmatized within their communities.[12]
One of the Janjaweed’s senior leaders, Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, better known as Ali Kushayb, directly commanded and participated in these attacks.[13] The International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, issuing an arrest warrant in 2007.[14] For years, he evaded capture before finally surrendering to the ICC in June 2020.[15] His trial marks a rare moment of accountability in the long struggle for justice in Darfur.
The Rome Statute is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002.[16] It grants the Court jurisdiction over four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.[17] Under this authority, the ICC brought charges against Kushayb, for his role in orchestrating atrocities against civilians in Darfur, Sudan.[18]
In June 2024, the ICC convicted Kushayb of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, persecution, torture, and attacks against civilians in the towns of Kodoom, Bindisi, Mukjar, and Deleig.[19] According to reports by the United Nations, the Janjaweed’s actions were marked by “indiscriminate killings” and widespread destruction.[20] Kushayb’s forces moved from village to village, burning homes, killing civilians, and inflicting terror without restraint.
Kushayb’s conviction represents a historic moment for international justice. It is the first ICC verdict arising from the Darfur situation, and a symbol of long-awaited accountability for victims.[21] The same young girl from the beginning of this piece (representing countless survivors) now witnesses the architect of her suffering finally held responsible. As Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said, the verdict “sends a resounding message to perpetrators of atrocities in Sudan, both past and present, that justice will prevail.”[22]
This verdict also offers a glimmer of hope for the broader international community. It demonstrates that, even after years of impunity, justice can reach those who once seemed untouchable. One can only hope that the ICC’s work continues to strengthen and that accountability for international atrocities expands across borders, bringing justice to those who have waited far too long to receive it.
Tragically, violence has returned to Darfur. Many experts and humanitarian organizations now warn that a new genocide may be unfolding in the region amid Sudan’s ongoing civil war.[23] The country has been engulfed in conflict since fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the internationally recognized national army, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group.[24]
The RSF traces its origins directly to the Janjaweed militias that carried out atrocities in Darfur two decades earlier.[25] Today, reports from the United Nations and human rights groups describe widespread killings, ethnically targeted attacks, and mass displacement across Darfur: grim reminders of the past that the world once vowed never to repeat.[26]
[1] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Darfur, Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/darfur. (last visited Nov. 8, 2025).
[2] Gérard Prunier, The Politics of Death in Darfur, 105 Current History 195, 196-200 (2006).
[3] See Scott Straus, Darfur and the Genocide Debate, 84 Foreign Affs. 123, 123-25 (2005).
[4] Id.
[5] See Accord, Environment, Conflict, and Peacebuilding: Addressing the Root Causes of Conflict in Darfur, (Aug. 19, 2022), https://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/environment-conflict-and-peacebuilding-addressing-the-root-causes-of-conflict-in-darfur/.
[6] Prunier, Supra note 2, at 198-99.
[7] Id.
[8] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Supra note 1.
[9] Id.
[10] United Nations, Darfur: ICC Convicts Janjaweed leader of war crimes and crimes against humanity, UN News (Oct. 6, 2025), https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/10/1166040.
[11] Tara Gingerich & Jennifer Leaning, The Use of Rape as a Weapon of War in the Conflict in Darfur, Sudan, 14-15 (Harvard Sch. of Pub. Health 2004).
[12] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Supra note 1
[13] See Prosecutor v. Kushayb, Situation in the Republic of the Sudan, Case No. ICC-02/05-01/07, Decision on the Prosecution’s Application for an Arrest Warrant against Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (Kushayb) (Int’l Crim. Ct. Oct. 27, 2020), https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/CourtRecords/CR2020_04408.PDF; Also See International Criminal Court, Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman declared guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, Sudan, International Criminal Court (Oct. 6, 2025), https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/ali-muhammad-ali-abd-al-rahman-declared-guilty-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanit.
[14] Id.
[15] Mishra, Supra note 10
[16] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Jul. 17, 1998, 2187 U.N.T.S. 3
[17] Id. at art. 5.
[18] Mishra, Supra note 10.
[19] Id.
[20] Id.
[21] Id.
[22] Id.
[23] Id.
[24] Id.
[25] Id.
[26] Id.