International efforts have focused on getting UN peacekeepers into Darfur. But what about a peace agreement?

As the one-year anniversary of the Darfur peace agreement approaches, the Sudanese president agrees to a partial deployment of UN troops but many wonder if it just another diplomatic feint.

U.S. Special Envoy Andrew Natsios says there is a risk of new large-scale bloodletting in Darfur unless peace talks intensify and peacekeepers are deployed.

Ban Ki-moon travels to the African Union summit in the hopes of convincing Sudan to accept an AU-UN force in Darfur.

The new secretary-general of the United Nations should make genocide prevention a centerpiece of his reform agenda, concludes a new Council Special Report. "Ban Ki-moon should take the General Assembly's endorsement of the responsibility to protect as a mandate and mission statement for the UN and build a reform program that is designed to implement it."

This report argues that the new UN secretary-general should take the General Assembly's endorsement of responsibility to protect as a mandate and as a mission statement. And the United States and others must take steps to bolster UN action and be available when the UN is not.

John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group and Erin Mazursky, executive director of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, discuss the escalating crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, Chad, and the Central African Republic.

In this report the US Institute for Peace (USIP) details proceedings at its Sudan Peace Forum in December 2006 in which Dr Chester Crocker and Dr Francis Deng co-chaired a discussion of overlapping crises in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic. The meeting was prompted by recent comments of the United Nations Under Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, who warned that the crises in Darfur, Chad, and CAR are "intimately linked" and could lead to a "dangerous regional crisis."

In this report Amnesty International says that thousands of women have been raped in Sudan and Chad since the armed conflict began in Darfur in 2003. There have certainly been thousands. The names of 250 women who had been raped, and harrowing information about their cases, were recorded by Amnesty International on a 10-day visit to just three refugee camps in Chad in 2004. Recent months have seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of rapes as Darfur has been plunged into new fighting. In just one camp in Darfur, Kalma camp, the International Rescue Committee reported that rapes of women rose from under four to 200 a month during five weeks in July and August 2006. Overall, despite  the presence of an African Union peacekeeping force (African Union Mission in Sudan, AMIS) and international awareness of what is happening in Darfur, in 2006 rapes and other violence against women and girls have increased, not diminished.

In this report Amnesty International says that the presence of an African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (AMIS) since 2004 has failed to stop the mass killings, rapes and forcible displacement of civilians in the region. Amnesty says that despite the presence already in Sudan of 10,000 UN peacekeepers, whose mandate was extended to include Darfur by the UN Security Council in August 2006, the Darfur region is now so insecure that one third of those affected are inaccessible to humanitarian agencies. Amnesty International’s agenda for effective protection of civilians sets out a 16-point programme that should be implemented by any peacekeeping force in Darfur.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is pushing for a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force in Sudan’s Darfur region. Khartoum has "agreed in principle" to such an operation, but details such as the size of the force remain to be determined.

CFR Senior Fellow Michael Gerson speaks with reporters about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Inaction in the face of genocide in Darfur breeds death in the region, but also contempt for international laws and voices which have demanded action—so far to no avail.

Princeton N. Lyman says that despite calls for military intervention in Darfur, he does not believe that such an approach would be practical. He hopes the U.S. special envoy to Darfur will be able to get the parties back to the negotiating table.

Roberta Cohen of the Brookings Institution discusses the expanded African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur region. She says the AU force, besides being undermanned and underfunded, is seriously limited by the actions of the Sudanese government.

In this report, Amnesty International argues that the Darfur Peace Agreement of May 2006 has created a new conflict, pitting the government and its allies against the non-signatories.