The forgotten ones

Abstract

To date, internecine violence in the Darfur region of Sudan has claimed the lives of 400,000 civilians (Coalition for International Justice March 2006); more than 2 million people have been displaced and countless more have been raped, robbed, intimidated and suffered other depredations of a collapsed social structure. The origins and continued enactment of the conflict is far more complex than is currently reflected in either the discourse of the Sudanese government or international political actors. In this paper, the authors present a rich history of the conflicts within the Darfur region of Sudan while drawing upon the extant state crime literature to both conceptually frame and theoretically illuminate the genocide. Through such an examination, not only does the paper present a holistic assessment of the multitude of social forces and conditions behind the events, but also extends the existing literature on both state criminality and genocide.