Darfur has been the first purported genocide to come along during all the international discussions on the ‘responsibility to protect’ – itself the end result of discussions about the legitimacy and legality of humanitarian intervention after the Kosovo War. It has often been seen as a test case for the principle, but a failed one, given that violence continues to wrack the region. It also is the first purported genocide to come along after wars were launched in Afghanistan and Iraq (the latter spectacularly controversially). The occasional use of humanitarian arguments justifying intervention in those two countries coloured the debates on the responsibility to protect – stoking suspicions that such justifications really served only to mask the interests of powerful western states, and therefore fostering resistance to the general principle of the responsibility to protect. The fact that Saddam Hussein was also accused of perpetrating genocide against the Kurds fuelled suspicions that allegations of genocide could be used to justify intervention.

The legal norm against genocide remained the same. As already noted, the principle of the responsibility to protect, as articulated by the UN in September 2005, does not provide for any ‘automatic’ intervention to protect a people from genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. Thus the only clear legal obligation on governments remains that of punishing perpetrators of genocide.