After two years of existence, the United Nations and African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) is still struggling to complete its deployment. Even if - as announced by the UN Secretary General - the Mission reaches the target of attaining the full authorized strength by the end of the year 2009, many challenges will then remain to be tackled.

This report starts with recalling the root causes of the conflict in Darfur and the complex process in which UNAMID took over the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) in December 2007. The following chapters present an analysis of the main challenges currently faced by UNAMID : the coherence between UNAMID and UNMIS, the volatility of the peace process, the issue of security, the internally displaced persons challenge and the peace vs. justice dilemma.

Although it is far too soon to draw any definitive assessment of UNAMID, the report proposes provisional lessons learned from this first peace operation of hybrid character and raises the question of its exit strategy.

 

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