Testifying at the ICC

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The prosecution of Ali Abd al-Rahma ‘Kushayb’ at the International Criminal Court opened earlier this month. It is the first case in which an alleged perpetrator of mass atrocities inflicted during the Darfur war in 2003-04 is facing international justice. Hopefully it will not be the last.

For the first time at an ICC trial, the prosecution and defense agreed that they would open the case with a jointly appointed expert witness, who can provide background and context for the proceedings. For this trial, they asked me to be that person.

Cover of "The Conflict in Darfur, Sudan"

I wrote a report, ‘The Conflict in Darfur, Sudan: Background and Overview,’ and testified over three days. The transcript is available online. Video will posted once it has become available.

It was an extraordinary and moving experience, to see the full, solemn procedures of justice at the highest court in the world being applied to crimes committed against humble people in small villages. I will be writing about it more in due course.


Alex de Waal is a Research Professor at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, and leads the WPF research programs on African Peacemaking and Mass Starvation.

Considered one of the foremost experts on the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, pandemic disease, and conflict and peace-building. His latest book is New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives. He is also author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine and The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa (Polity Press, 2015)

Following a fellowship with the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard (2004-06), he worked with the Social Science Research Council as Director of the program on HIV/AIDS and Social Transformation, and led projects on conflict and humanitarian crises in Africa (2006-09). During 2005-06, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur and from 2009-11 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly’s 27 “brave thinkers” in 2009 and is the winner of the 2024 Huxley Award of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Professor de Waal regularly teaches a course on Conflict in Africa at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.  During this course, students should gain a deeper understanding of the nature of contemporary violent conflict in Africa. Students will be expected to master the key theoretical approaches to violence in Africa, and to become familiar with a number of important case studies. The focus is on the origins and nature of violence, rather than policy responses and solutions. The course is inter-disciplinary and involves readings in political science, international relations, and social anthropology, while also touching on economics, environmental studies, and history. 

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