Darfur is a large, mostly dry region in the west of Sudan, in Africa. It is not a country of its own, though news stories sometimes make it sound like one. The name is Arabic and means “land of the Fur”; the Fur are a people who have lived there for a long time. From 2003 a war inside the country grew into a terrible emergency: many people were killed in the fighting, many more died from hunger and disease, and millions had to leave their homes. People still say “Darfur” as a short way of talking about that crisis, not only as a place on the map. The United Nations and powerful countries were widely criticised for not doing enough to stop it getting worse. Though actually the suffering did not have one neat ending. Different armed groups, government forces, and later new wars in Sudan have kept the region unsafe for years. In English it is a place name, so we say in Darfur, not “in the Darfur”.