Jewish World Watch (JWW) came into being as a response to the Darfur genocide. The Darfuris remain a vital cornerstone of our work. We continue to monitor and support the refugees living in camps in Chad 15 years after fleeing their homes in western Sudan, as well as the internally displaced persons in the Darfur region of Sudan, and the Darfuri returnees. While Darfur has lost its prominence in the global consciousness, it remains an embodiment of the “never again” mantra, resuscitated every time other conflicts start to tip the scales towards mass atrocities. What many don’t recognize is that the instability in the Darfur region has continued ever since the conflict began in 2003. It’s time to refresh our memories of the conflict situation and shine a spotlight on a war zone making a long, arduous transition from full-blown genocide to sustainable peace.
JWW will continue to do all we can to keep people’s attention on this ongoing crisis, including:
- Using our advocacy channels to ensure the safe and voluntary return of displaced populations and the presence of necessary services and protections to facilitate their smooth reintegration
- Monitoring the activities of armed groups and security forces as well as the Government of Sudan’s response to violations
- Calling for the international community to remain engaged throughout the transition from peacekeeping to peacebuilding instead of abandoning its responsibilities at this critical and unstable stage
- Empowering affected populations with sustainable livelihood solutions and immediate, informal learning opportunities that will boost their resilience, improve their lives in camp settings, and translate well in Darfur, should they choose to return
Present-day Darfur
Despite the creation of a power-sharing agreement between the government and rebels in 2011–which created the Darfur Regional Authority and aimed to establish more equal distribution of wealth and political power–violence continues to this day in many parts of Darfur. Armed groups fight among themselves for control over natural resources and the spoils of land and loot pillaged by the Janjaweed. These groups continue to engage in killing, maiming, land-grabbing, extortion, smuggling and theft.
In July 2018, the UN Security Council decided to scale back the African Union/United Nations Hybrid operation in Darfur known as UNAMID, with the intention of wrapping up the UN-African Union joint mission by the end of 2020. This is a troubling development given that fighting and attacks on civilians continue to this day. Sudan has long demanded an exit strategy for UNAMID, which now has about 10,500 troops and police with a mandate to protect civilians caught up in fighting between the government of Sudan (GoS) forces and Darfur rebel groups.
In late September, a high-level meeting resulted in the creation of a Group of Friends to back the transition from peacekeeping to peacebuilding and development in Darfur. At the meeting, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed claimed that the security situation in Darfur has largely improved since the height of the conflict. Similarly, the latest report of UNAMID calls the situation in Darfur “generally stable” with some “low scale skirmishes.”
But is this true?
The answer is no. This glossing-over by peacekeepers and the international community creates a palpable risk that the formidable protection needs of civilians will be ignored or forgotten. While it is true that there was less fighting in Darfur in 2017, leading up the United States’ lifting of economic sanctions in the last days of the Obama administration, even now rebel militia and government security forces, including the notoriously abusive Rapid Support Forces (RPF), continue to perpetrate ground attacks against civilians in violations of international law. For example, between mid-March and mid-April of this year, the RPF, dubbed the “new Janjaweed” because of their unbridled brutality, attacked various locations in Eastern Jebel Marra, burning at least 12 villages to the ground, killing at least 23 civilians, and displacing about 15,000 people.
Human rights organizations have documented continuing patterns of rights violations. Sexual violence rages with impunity: in December 2016, two young women, ages 16 and 19, were held at gunpoint and raped repeatedly by six armed militiamen as they were gathering firewood some distance from their IDP camp. Sudanese authorities have also continued to restrict basic freedoms of assembly and association through violent crackdowns on peaceful protesters and other restrictions on civil society organizations.
International actors don’t know the full scale of the death toll and destruction being wrought on civilians across Darfur because they have been largely absent. As UNAMID, in its efforts to quickly downsize, pulls out of certain areas of Darfur, the risk intensifies of heightened violence against civilians. While these attacks may be classified as “low-scale skirmishes” to a peacekeeping force anxious to wrap things up by a looming deadline, they are in no way minor for the people whose lives continue to be disrupted and destroyed.
Refugees and IDPs
Because the Darfur genocide set off such dramatic migration, both inside and outside of Sudan, one cannot assess the current situation without considering the condition of Darfuri refugees and IDPs. Chad is currently home to about 300,000 refugees from Darfur, most of whom have lived in 12 UNHCR and government-run camps in eastern Chad for more than a decade. In 2016, as funds continued to be stretched thin due to the ever-increasing number of people in crisis worldwide, the World Food Program (WFP) drastically reduced its food assistance to the camps in Chad. Each refugee in Chad currently receives “only about 39 percent of the generally recommended minimum daily intake,” according to WFP. The reduced rations, meant to feed refugees for a month, don’t even last a full week.
While much of the world’s attention has shifted elsewhere, the refugees of Chad remain in crisis. Their suffering in these imperiled camps along the Darfur/Chad border command no attention, making the Darfuris the largest invisible refugee population in the world. UNHCR has sent a message to these refugees that they must either become self-reliant and integrate into Chadian society or return to Darfur. Even the educational curriculum has switched from Sudanese to Chadian.
The cutbacks in assistance from UN agencies such as the WFP and UNHCR are also resulting in de facto forced return of Darfuri refugees to a region still insecure and peppered with violence. In January 2018, Sudan, Chad, and the UN signed an agreement for the repatriation of 20,000 Sudanese refugees from Chad to Darfur during this year. The agreement set out estimated numbers of refugees who will return during 2018, types and levels of reintegration assistance they will receive, and logistical aspects of the repatriation operation. The first group of 53 refugees returned to North Darfur in April 2018–a test group–which UNHCR hoped would catalyze the return of thousands more. The repatriation, however, was temporarily suspended due to insecurity and lack of services and infrastructure for returnees in their areas of origin. Resettlement efforts are set to resume in December. Khartoum also plans to dismantle IDP camps moving forward, either transforming them into residential areas or integrating them into existing towns.
Unfortunately, these voluntary returns have not gone smoothly. Refugees from Chad and internally displaced Darfuris have faced immense obstacles in their attempts to go home. Despite reassurance from UN agencies and the Sudanese government that the security situation is much-improved and Darfur is prepared to welcome and reintegrate the 2.7 million people displaced by the genocide, recent reports from the ground suggest otherwise. Radio Dabanga reported in April of this year that unidentified gunmen had killed four returnees participating in the Voluntary Return Programme and wounded six others in an attack on the village of Jamra in South Darfur. Approximately 400 internally displaced Darfuris who returned from El Neem camp to their village in Eastern Darfur were assaulted and beaten by militant new settlers this past March.
The combination of roaming rebels, stockpiles of uncollected weapons and armed new settlers has led to great danger for recent returnees. The “new Janjaweed,” other militia and security forces supported by the GoS, and unidentified gunmen exploiting the vulnerability of the returnees, have killed farmers and innocent civilians, stolen crops, destroyed food surpluses, raided markets, kidnapped people for ransom, raped, and pillaged–all with general impunity. Returnee farmers are afraid to go back to their plots for fear of attacks from new settlers who have taken the land in their absence, or by militiamen who steal livestock and crops. The general atmosphere of insecurity, coupled with the government’s impotence in addressing these attacks, has crippled the agricultural economy and compromised voluntary returns. One leader of the displaced population stressed that security is non-existent despite the government’s repeated claims to the contrary; and that services like education, health, and potable water are completely lacking from the villages to which returnees are meant to return. In another terrifying turn of events, it appears that most of the Darfur rebel groups have consolidated their presence in Libya, joining armed groups there and building up their capabilities in preparation for a return to Sudan.
So where are these millions of displaced Darfuris supposed to go if they are being essentially squeezed out of camps due to dwindling aid or face unchecked violence when they try to go back home? This is a quandary it seems no one can answer right now. What is clear, though, is that Darfur is far from where it needs to be in the face of accelerated international detachment. UNAMID cannot merely pack up and move out. If anything, it needs to become agile enough to respond quickly to violence across all of the states in Darfur and strengthen–not abandon–its protection role, which is why it was created in the first place. Moreover, the UN cannot continue to gloss over the egregious attacks on people, property, and livelihood continuing throughout the region.
For our part, Jewish World Watch is doing what it can to empower the Darfuri refugees in Chad with skills that will enable them to survive despite the reduction in food assistance and the exit of vital services. Our perma-gardening program is teaching women how to sustainably feed their families with just a small plot of dry land. And our educational assistance program is creating homegrown, camp-based pre-schools so that children born into the camps can receive early childhood education in their mother tongue. These efforts are creating opportunities for mentoring and community-building, as beneficiaries go on to train others, and community-owned animals provide food for children in the schools. These interventions inject a level of normalcy into these survivors’ lives, empowering them with a sense of resilience and control over their own destinies. With the skills they learn, they can be prepared to sustain their families and quickly integrate into the Sudanese education system, when it becomes safe enough to return, and only if it’s their choice to do so.
Background of the Conflict
The history of Darfur is labyrinthine. This western region of Sudan has been embroiled in conflict since 2003, born out of long-fomenting tensions around the economic and political marginalization of non-Arabs. President Omar al-Bashir’s Arab supremacists movement, which relied on identity politics to mobilize support, drove a deep wedge between the communities in Darfur. Policies which seemed to intentionally segregate non-Arabs and split Darfur into three separate regions essentially broke the unity of Darfuri tribes. As the Second Sudanese Civil War between the North and South began to move towards a peace process in 2002-5, the prospect of being excluded from comprehensive peace talks heightened the Darfuris’ sense of governmental neglect. Members of the marginalized Fur and Zaghawa tribes began to form rebel groups.
In March 2003, these rebel groups staged a major offensive while the Government of Sudan (GoS) was occupied with the North-South conflict. The ambitious attacks took the GoS by surprise, and resulted in the capturing of several key government installations, including El Fasher airport. The government responded with aerial bombardments in Darfur and by recruiting nomadic militias called the Janjaweed to fight the rebels in a counterinsurgency campaign, with the support of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). These militias engaged in an inhumane, ethnically-targeted campaign of mass killings, forced displacement, destruction of property, and the use of rape as a weapon of war.
The conflict–which was eventually deemed a genocide–claimed 300,000 lives, internally displaced more than 2 million people, and forced another 300,000 to flee abroad, primarily to neighboring Chad. Eventually, after weak attempts by various international actors to adequately address the disastrous situation on the ground, a hybrid United Nations and African Union mission (UNAMID) was deployed to the country to monitor the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement and subsequent 2011 Doha Document for Peace in Darfur. However, international assistance came too late. By the time the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end the North-South war was signed in January 2005, and the international community finally turned its attention to Darfur, the genocidal violence had already claimed almost two-thirds of its total victims.
In March 2005, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) referred the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC). In July 2008, the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno Ocampo, requested an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Al-Bashir. This milestone marked the first time the ICC had indicted a sitting Head of State. He was charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, and eventually, genocide. Although the warrants remain in force, Al-Bashir continues to preside over Sudan. For now, victims must be satisfied in knowing that many states have denied Al-Bashir entry, refused to host summits he intended to attend, and threatened to enforce the ICC arrest warrants if he travels within their territories.