UN Moves Toward Ending UN-AU Peacekeeping in Sudan’s Darfur

Displaced Sudanese queue to receive humanitarian aid supplies at the Kalma camp for internally displaced people in Darfur's state capital Niyala on Oct. 9, 2019. Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images

UNITED NATIONS—The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to move toward ending the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan’s vast western Darfur region and replacing it with a civilian mission focusing on the country’s democratic transition.

The council didn’t set a date for the end of the mission, known as the United Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), in the two related resolutions that were approved in writing on the night of June 3 under new rules initiated because of the COVID-19 pandemic and formally adopted at a Security Council meeting in the morning of June 4.