Abstract
Since the independence of Sudan in 1956, Darfur, situated in the western part of the country, has been confronted with numerous and violent conflicts. The actual crisis in the region began in February 2003 and opposed originally the non-Arab rebels of Darfur against the forces of the Sudanese government and the Arab militias it sustains, the Janjawids. Since then, it has become a heavy civil war in Africa – and featured even on an international scale. This conflict in Darfur is today considered as one of the major humanitarian crisis of the last decades: since the beginning of the civil war in 2003, more than five hundred thousands inhabitants of Darfur have been killed and more than two millions have been displaced. Although the crisis quickly took a great importance, the international media became interested in Darfur only one year after the beginning of the conflict, especially once the American government had spoken of ‘genocide'.
If the media put the emphasis essentially on this humanitarian disaster, the political and diplomatic solving of the crisis which aims at resolving the conflicts in the African continent the African Union, has been the leader of the peacemaking process from 2004. Darfur constitutes in fact its first large-scale intervention of peacemaking, and, therefore, it represents an important stake for the credibility of the young organization in the international scene.
