ABSTRACT
As scholars who have each devoted decades to researching, writing, and teaching about genocide, we are proud to have served as two of the twenty-four investigators on the Darfur Atrocities Documentation Team (ADT). As we commented in the Introduction to this book, we regard this initiative as being truly historic for several reasons. The ADT was the first official investigation by a government into allegations of genocide committed by another government while the killing and dying were still underway. Data collected by the ADT were instrumental in the U.S. Government's unprecedented declaration that the Government of Sudan and its Janjaweed allies were guilty of genocide. The data collected by the ADT also served as the basis for the U.S. Government invoking, for the first time, Chapter VIII of the United Nations' Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to call on the UN Security Council to conduct an official criminal investigation of alleged genocide. As a result of Resolution 1564, passed on September 18, 2004, the Security Council established the UN Commission of Inquiry, whose report, released just a few months later, led the Security Council, in Resolution 1593, to refer the situation in Sudan to the International Criminal Court — both actions being unprecedented in the history of the United Nations.
