The violence in Darfur that erupted after Sudan’s broader civil war began in April 2023 has hardened into something that human rights investigators and some governments now describe as ethnic cleansing and, in at least one official U.S. determination, genocide. The Rapid Support Forces and allied militias have been implicated in systematic, ethnically targeted campaigns against non-Arab communities in West Darfur, above all the Massalit of El Geneina. These are not isolated crimes of opportunity. They are part of a pattern of deliberate targeting, mass displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure that reshapes the social map of the region.
The weight of multiple independent investigations gives the allegation its gravity. Human Rights Watch documented a concentrated campaign against predominantly Massalit neighborhoods in El Geneina that included mass killings, rape, torture and deliberate destruction of homes and services. The organization concluded the attacks bear the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing. At the same time a UN Panel of Experts estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in El Geneina during the worst waves of violence, and traced how RSF and allied militias planned and executed operations that singled out communities on the basis of ethnicity. Those two sources together convert anecdote into a pattern that the international community cannot treat as random collateral harm.
By early 2025 the United States formally concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias had committed genocide, citing systematic murders of men and boys on ethnic grounds and deliberate sexual violence against women and girls. That policy determination was accompanied by sanctions aimed at RSF leadership and associated commercial networks. The political meaning of such a determination is profound. It narrows the space for normalizing or co-opting the RSF into postconflict governance, and it obliges states and institutions to treat the crisis as one involving the gravest international crimes. But legal determinations and sanctions are only part of a necessary response. They must be matched by credible enforcement against arms flows and the economic networks that let paramilitaries sustain prolonged campaigns.
The mechanics of this renewed atrocity are familiar and instructive. The RSF draws institutional lineage from the Janjaweed militias of the earlier Darfur war. That continuity matters because it carries knowledge, local networks and a political narrative that frames certain communities as the enemy. The operational picture in 2023 and 2024 combined ground assault, targeted killings and the systematic destruction of civilian lifelines. Humanitarian access was repeatedly impeded, and whole neighborhoods were razed or rendered uninhabitable, forcing hundreds of thousands across the border into Chad and creating an entirely new wave of refugees. Those demographic shifts are themselves strategic ends. For armed actors, ethnic cleansing is both a tactical method to reduce opposition and a political method to alter future claims over territory and resources.
Arms and technologies have amplified the pace and reach of these crimes. Investigations and rights groups have documented weapon flows and the likely reexport of military systems that contravene international restrictions. Amnesty and other monitors have highlighted the role of external actors and networks that supplied equipment to parties inside Sudan, enabling rapid escalation and sustained offensives. Separately, journalistic investigations have exposed private defense contracts and transfers that complicate state efforts to control proliferation and enforce embargoes. The strategic implication is clear. When commercial suppliers, permissive intermediaries and permissive states permit advanced systems to enter a fractured battlefield, the capacity for targeted, high-casualty operations expands. That in turn raises the risk that crimes against civilians will be executed faster and with greater impunity.
This mixture of local drivers and external enabling factors creates a threefold problem for international policy. First, there is the immediate imperative of civilian protection and humanitarian relief in a country where access is contested and infrastructure has been destroyed. Second, there is the accountability imperative. The scale and specificity of the allegations mean that only robust criminal investigations, evidence preservation and targeted sanctions can begin to break cycles of impunity. Third, there is the long term political question. Any durable settlement that permits actors accused of ethnic cleansing to retain power or economic control risks freezing ethnic divisions into permanent inequities and recurring cycles of violence.
Practical steps follow from that assessment. Short term, the priority must be safer, unimpeded humanitarian access and protection measures for populations under threat. That requires diplomatic pressure on parties to allow convoys, guarantees for civilian safe zones, and amplified cross border support to neighbouring states absorbing refugees. Medium term, states and multilateral bodies should tighten enforcement of arms embargoes and traceable sanctions on commercial intermediaries that facilitate reexports or clandestine transfers. The evidence already compiled by rights groups and investigative journalists points to commercial chains that can be disrupted if there is political will. Finally, long term accountability must be credible, timely and visible. That means support for independent fact finding, for forensic documentation of mass graves and attacks, and for prosecution either through international mechanisms or well supported domestic processes that meet international standards.
The geopolitical calculation of external patrons will determine whether these measures are implemented. Some regional states have viewed the RSF instrumentally, valuing access, influence or stability over human rights concerns. Others have recoiled. The U.S. genocide determination changes incentives, but it will not alone shift entrenched regional calculations. Coherent pressure therefore requires coalition building among states willing to couple targeted financial and travel restrictions with credible enforcement on end users and brokers. It also requires public naming of corporate actors that facilitate transfers, and the regulatory will to hold them accountable.
The renewal of mass atrocities in Darfur is both a continuity and a warning. Continuity because the political logic behind earlier waves of violence remains legible today. Warning because the technical and commercial networks that enable modern warfare have made those atrocities more rapid and more devastating. Policymakers who care about preventing another Darfur must treat the problem as one that crosses the line between criminal accountability and geopolitical competition. Without a dual strategy that clamps down on the networks that arm perpetrators while simultaneously protecting and empowering threatened communities, the demographic and political effects of ethnic cleansing will be long lasting.
Accountability will be difficult. It will require durable international attention, not episodic outrage. It will require states to subordinate transactional relations to a longer view of regional stability. The alternative is grim. Allowing armed actors who have demonstrated a willingness to pursue ethnic elimination to reconstitute their political power would entrench divisions that will haunt Sudan and the region for generations. The strategic imperative is to stop that trajectory now, by cutting the supply lines of violence, securing protection for civilians, and building pathways to justice that make impunity costly and infeasible.