The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor has not applied for a single arrest warrant over crimes committed in Sudan’s Darfur region since the country’s war began in April 2023, despite more than three years of investigation and repeated public assurances that charges were imminent, Middle East Eye has revealed. The disclosure is based on multiple sources and court documents. The office has specifically decided not to proceed with a warrant against a member of the Rapid Support Forces — an application that Prosecutor Karim Khan told judges in January 2025 he intended to file imminently.
That January 2025 briefing to the UN Security Council was unambiguous. Khan told the council his office was taking the necessary steps to file arrest warrant applications over crimes in West Darfur since April 2023, singling out gender-based crimes against women and girls as a priority. The application concerned alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes. More than 17 months later, no application has been filed.
The delay has now drawn a formal rebuke from the court itself. A three-judge panel in the pretrial chamber criticised the Office of the Prosecutor and ordered it to explain the reason for the delay and provide a timeline for filing the application. The panel cited the deputy prosecutor’s own statements to the Security Council describing the deteriorating situation in Darfur, and noted that arrest warrants could help prevent further crimes.
The court’s response to Middle East Eye did not explain the stall. The Office of the Prosecutor said it has “a duty of confidentiality to the Court as well as to victims and witnesses” and that under the court’s amended regulations all arrest warrant applications are to be classified as secret or under seal. It added that the investigation had “accelerated in recent months, with more focused investigative lines, increased evidence collection and witness interviews, and further analytical work,” and said priority had been given to gender-based crimes and crimes against children.
The scope of RSF atrocities during that period is extensive and internationally documented. A UN fact-finding report published in February 2026 concluded that the RSF committed genocide in el-Fasher against non-Arab groups. A separate UN report issued last week found the paramilitary was responsible for the majority of sexual crimes committed by warring parties in Sudan over the past three years. The UN Security Council has sanctioned four RSF commanders over atrocities in Darfur, while the US has formally accused the RSF of genocide and sanctioned its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, since January 2025.
A significant institutional complication has compounded the delay. Khan took a leave of absence in May 2025 following allegations of sexual misconduct, which he has categorically denied. According to the Times of Israel, deputy prosecutors assumed his caseload during the period. For more than a year after Khan’s leave of absence, the prosecution did not provide any explanation to the pretrial chamber regarding the late application. Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan, who is currently overseeing the Darfur investigation, has yet to provide a timeline for any further arrest warrants, according to Middle East Eye.
The ICC’s own January 2026 report to the Security Council acknowledged that efforts to engage the RSF had produced nothing. The document noted that the RSF had been appointed a focal point to interface with the Office in early 2025, but that promises made by the RSF to cooperate with the OTP have not been fulfilled.
The failure to act stands in contrast to the court’s record elsewhere. All existing ICC arrest warrants related to Darfur concern crimes from the 2003–2007 period — a generation before the current war. The court’s only conviction over Darfur, of former Janjaweed leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also relates to that earlier period. Abd-al-Rahman was sentenced to 20 years in December 2025, although the case is under appeal. Four warrants from the earlier era remain unexecuted: against former president Omar al-Bashir, former ministers Ahmad Harun and Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein, and rebel commander Abdallah Banda.
Addressing the Security Council in January 2025, Khan drew explicit parallels between the current war and the 2003 atrocities. “The pattern of crimes, the perpetrators, the parties, tracked very closely with the same protagonists, the same targeted groups as existed in 2003,” he said, adding: “It’s the same communities, the same groups suffering, a new generation suffering the same hell that has been endured by other generations of Darfuris.”
The humanitarian scale of the current conflict is without precedent in Sudan’s modern history. The war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces has killed thousands over the past three years, displaced more than 13 million people, and driven more than 19.5 million to the brink of famine — prompting what the UN and European Union have described as the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crisis.
Accountability for alleged foreign support to the RSF has also failed to materialise at the court. Rights groups have filed two communications with the Office of the Prosecutor requesting it to investigate the role of foreign actors, particularly senior officials from the United Arab Emirates, for aiding and abetting RSF atrocities. The UAE has denied backing the RSF.
Background
The ICC opened its formal investigation into crimes committed since the outbreak of the current Sudan war in July 2023, when Khan announced his office was examining alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Sudanese Armed Forces, the RSF, and allied groups. Sudan’s war erupted on April 15, 2023 when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF in Khartoum and rapidly spread to Darfur. The ICC has had a referral for Darfur from the UN Security Council since 2005, giving it jurisdiction over crimes committed there. The RSF is the successor organisation to the Janjaweed militia responsible for mass atrocities in Darfur in the 2003–2007 period. Karim Khan, who served as prosecutor since June 2021, recused himself from cases where a prior conflict of interest applied due to his earlier work as ICC defence counsel. He went on leave in May 2025 following the misconduct allegations; the ICC’s Bureau subsequently moved to lower the threshold required for his potential removal.
What Happens Next
Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan is scheduled to deliver a semi-annual briefing on Darfur to the UN Security Council later this month, where the absence of any warrant application is likely to face direct questioning from member states. The pretrial chamber’s order requiring the OTP to explain the delay and set a filing timeline remains outstanding, and the court has not disclosed when it expects a response. Rights groups continue to press the OTP to include an investigation into the role of the UAE and other foreign actors in the Darfur atrocities. No date has been set for any potential arrest warrant application, and the OTP declined to provide one to Middle East Eye.
