America called it genocide. The ICC shelved the warrant

Open any newspaper and the word “genocide” is everywhere, attached to a conflict now in its third year of international litigation, endlessly debated by legal scholars, contested by governments, and argued over in United Nations chambers and on cable news alike. Reasonable people disagree about it, and that disagreement drives coverage.

Then there is Sudan. In January 2025, the United States government designated the Rapid Support Forces’ campaign in Darfur a genocide. No serious government contests the finding. And for three years, the International Criminal Court, the institution supposedly built for exactly this purpose, has not sought a single new arrest warrant over it.