What was the United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur?

The United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was a hybrid peacekeeping force authorized by the United Nations Security Council on July 31, 2007.12

It was established as a compromise to address the humanitarian crisis and violence in the Darfur region of Sudan, where Arab militias had been conducting a terror campaign against sedentary agriculturalists since 2003. UNAMID was designed to replace an earlier, smaller African Union mission that had struggled to contain the conflict.12

Although authorized in 2007, large-scale troop deployment did not commence until 2008. The mission's effectiveness was significantly hampered by ongoing obstruction from the government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and the persistence of regional conflict, which intensified further following government military campaigns in 2013 and 2014. The mission operated in a context where hundreds of thousands of people were killed and millions were displaced in what has been described as the first genocide of the 21st century.12