Dec 26, 2014 3 min read

UNITED NATIONS – Under intense pressure from the government of Sudan, the United Nations is planning to shrink its floundering peacekeeping force in Darfur, even though renewed fighting there has chased more people from their homes this year than during any other in the past decade.

The withdrawal plans come right after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, announced that she had decided to suspend the genocide case against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, because world powers have done nothing to secure his arrest.

The twin retrenchments are emblematic of the limits of international attention at a time when Darfur has been overshadowed by newer crises and conflicts around the world, from the civil wars in Syria and South Sudan to the Ebola epidemic.

Once the world’s largest peacekeeping operation, with 20,000 blue-helmeted soldiers on the ground, the U.N. force in Sudan’s Darfur region has already been trimmed by 4,000 troops, and plans are underway to cut more in the coming months despite the surge in violence.

Even at full strength, the mission has been criticized for failing to protect civilians in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Since 2003, when an armed rebellion in Darfur was met with a brutal government crackdown, the conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands, and displaced more than 2 million people.

Now, as rebel groups splinter and the notorious pro-government janjaweed militias re-emerge, renewed fighting has chased 457,000 people from their homes this year alone, according to the United Nations.

But U.N. officials say that their forces are routinely attacked by Sudanese forces and their proxies; that it is virtually impossible for their peacekeepers to remain in the country without Sudan’s blessing; and that some of their units have performed poorly and could be eliminated.

“The heart of matter for us remains the protection of civilians affected by the conflict and ensuring that any drawdown does not have a negative impact on this critical task,” said the U.N. undersecretary general for peacekeeping, Hervé Ladsous.

U.N. officials say Sudanese obstructionism is mostly to blame for the setbacks, while critics accuse the United Nations of ineptitude and cover-ups. The mission remains one of the world’s most expensive, with an annual budget of $1.4 billion.

The growing sense of international resignation toward Darfur stands in jarring contrast to the passionate activism that it stirred only recently, when “Save Darfur” was a household term, with Hollywood celebrities like George Clooney using their fame to draw attention to Darfur’s misery.