West Darfur Protection Analysis Update

West Darfur has suffered severe bouts of intercommunal violence since the withdrawal of UNAMID from the state in mid-2019. In 2020, there were five major inter-communal clashes. The first incident was in late December 2019 / January 2020, when an attack on IDPs in El Geneina town camps secondarily displaced over 41,000 IDPs to public buildings in the town. Surrounding towns and villages were also heavily impacted. The second incident occurred in May and June 2020 in Jebal Moon and the third in July 2020 in Mesteri town, Beida locality, and the villages surrounding Geneina. In 2021, there were two major inter-communal violent clashes in El Geneina and surrounding localities leading to the deaths and injuries of hundreds of individuals, including civilians. As of 28 April 2022, significant conflict in Krenik locality and El Geneina has resulted in an unconfirmed number of deaths, injuries and displacement. 1 There have been several incidents outside Geneina (Forobaranga – Fur/nomads, Krenik – Tama/Gimir, Jabel Moon – Masseriya Jabal/nomads).

As of 22 March, per the IOM’s Emergency Event Track (EET), there are 153,374 displaced persons in temporary gathering sites in schools and public buildings in Geneina town, Jabal Moon, Sirba and Krenik localities. While most families hosted at these gathering points belong to the Massalit tribe, protection teams have also identified families from Fur, Bargo, Aringa, Dajo and Tama tribes. While efforts of the Government of Sudan (deployment of security forces, sending high-level delegations, negotiations etc.) did not resolve the inter-communal clashes, humanitarian organisations in the past two years only responded to the urgent protection and assistance needs of the conflict-affected population. The analysis recommends several actions to be taken by the Government of Sudan (GoS) and international organisations to reduce the level of violence, provide protection to civilians while looking for durable solutions for IDPs.