The Genocide Unfolding in Darfur That the World Refuses to See
While so many of us are focused on other atrocities, Sudan is collapsing, and the people there aren't being saved.
In Darfur, western Sudan, an unmistakable genocide is taking place. Entire communities are being wiped out because of who they are. The Massalit and Zaghawa peoples are being hunted, their homes torched, their towns emptied. Their killers are not hiding. The perpetrators, fighters from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their allied militias, film themselves committing atrocities and post the footage to social media. They openly speak of “cleaning” cities of non-Arab inhabitants. International researchers track the destruction from above, mapping the burning villages and newly-dug mass graves. Doctors working in the region document the bodies and the survivors. It is all there, visible in plain sight. And yet, the world looks away.
The Rapid Support Forces are the latest incarnation of the Janjaweed militias that terrorized Darfur twenty years ago, when the world’s attention was briefly fixed on the region. Back then, the Janjaweed waged a campaign of mass killing, rape, and expulsion against non-Arab communities such as the Massalit, Fur, and Zaghawa. The International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Sudan’s then-president Omar al-Bashir for genocide. But while the violence eventually receded, the Janjaweed never went away. Rebranded as the RSF and given a formal place within Sudan’s security apparatus, they bided their time. Today, under the leadership of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, they have returned to finish the job.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a brutal civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. What began as a power struggle between two generals has spiraled into one of the worst humanitarian crises on Earth. More than ten million people have been driven from their homes. Hunger is rampant, and parts of the country are already in famine. Both sides have committed atrocities, but it is in Darfur that the violence takes on a distinctly genocidal character.
The RSF’s operations in Darfur are not simply acts of war. They are targeted campaigns aimed at eradicating entire ethnic groups from the region. In city after city, RSF fighters and allied Arab militias have descended on Massalit and Zaghawa communities, killing indiscriminately, burning homes, and forcing survivors to flee. Witnesses report that fighters separate people by ethnicity, killing those identified as non-Arab. In Zamzam, one of Sudan’s largest displacement camps, RSF forces rampaged for four days, shooting into crowds, looting, burning shelters, and committing mass sexual assaults. Survivors say the fighters asked people directly if they were Zaghawa — those who said yes were executed on the spot.
In June 2023, the city of El Geneina in West Darfur fell to the RSF after weeks of fighting with local Massalit armed groups. What followed was one of the most shocking massacres in the conflict. As thousands of civilians attempted to flee in a convoy, RSF fighters and their allies opened fire along the route, pursuing survivors into the streets, rounding them up, and executing them. Human Rights Watch has documented this massacre in detail, estimating that at least 10,000 people were killed. The killings were not the byproduct of chaotic fighting; they were organized, methodical, and focused on destroying a community.
The siege of El Fasher, the last major holdout against RSF control in Darfur, now threatens to become the next chapter in this campaign of extermination. Home to around a million people, El Fasher is surrounded and under bombardment. RSF fighters speak openly of their intent to “clean” the city, language that in the context of Darfur means the removal or destruction of its non-Arab inhabitants. In past battles, such words have been followed by mass killings. The people of El Fasher know what will happen if the city falls.
These atrocities are not secrets. Journalists, aid workers, and Sudanese activists have been reporting them for months. Satellite imagery shows entire neighborhoods reduced to ash. Mass graves have been identified and geolocated. Survivors tell their stories to anyone who will listen. The United States has already designated the RSF’s actions in Darfur as genocide. The United Nations has warned that the risk of genocide is “very high.” Yet beyond statements of concern and a few rounds of targeted sanctions, the international response has been muted.
The lack of action is stark when compared to past crises. In the early 2000s, the first Darfur genocide sparked global outrage. Celebrities took up the cause. Campaigns demanded intervention. Today, despite the evidence of another genocide unfolding, there is little sustained media coverage, few political leaders pressing for action, and no sign of the kind of mobilization that could pressure the perpetrators or their foreign backers.
Part of the reason is that Sudan’s war is complex and multifaceted. Outside Darfur, both the RSF and SAF commit war crimes. In Khartoum and other cities, the RSF ran torture centers, disappeared civilians, and looted entire neighborhoods. The SAF has bombed markets and residential areas, often killing children. Both have blocked humanitarian aid to areas under the other’s control. But complexity cannot obscure the fact that in Darfur, one side is carrying out systematic ethnic cleansing.
The RSF’s base of support comes from nomadic Arab tribes that have long held grievances against Sudan’s central elite. In their vision of a new Darfur under RSF rule, there is no place for the settled non-Arab communities they are now destroying. This is not simply about seizing power from the SAF; it is about reshaping the demographic landscape of Darfur to fit an exclusionary ethnic ideal.
International law is clear: acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group constitute genocide. The killings in El Geneina, Zamzam, and other parts of Darfur fit this definition. The patterns are deliberate, the intent explicit, and the consequences devastating. If allowed to continue, this campaign could erase the Massalit and Zaghawa from their historic homeland.
The consequences will not stop at Darfur’s borders. Mass displacement is already straining neighboring Chad, which hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees. The ethnic polarization fueled by the RSF’s actions risks igniting broader conflicts in Sudan’s peripheries, including the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. If Darfur is ethnically cleansed, the precedent will embolden other armed actors across the region.
Stopping this genocide requires more than condemnation. It demands coordinated pressure on the RSF and its backers, particularly the United Arab Emirates, which has been accused of supplying the group with weapons. It requires urgent support for humanitarian corridors into besieged areas like El Fasher. And it requires sustained attention from global media and policymakers, without which the perpetrators will feel free to continue their campaign.
The genocide unfolding in Darfur is neither hidden nor inevitable. It is the result of calculated choices by identifiable actors. The world has the tools to respond, to sanction, to isolate, to provide protection and aid. But those tools mean nothing if they remain unused. Every day that passes without action is another day the Massalit and Zaghawa face annihilation. History will not be kind to those who looked away.