PeaceRep research informs expert economic evidence to the ICC

PeaceRep research on predatory peace has supported expert economic evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in the Abd-Al-Rahman case.

In October 2025, Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (‘Ali Kushayb’) was convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of 27 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur, Sudan, between August 2003 and April 2004. He was later sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.

At a reparations hearing at the ICC on 8 September 2026, Sudans Research Director at the LSE and former PeaceRep researcher Dr Matthew Benson-Strohmayer presented evidence on how reparations can reach some 3.5 million victims of atrocities in Darfur while Sudan is still at war.

Dr Benson-Strohmayer first brought this evidence to ICC Trial Chamber I in June 2026 in a ‘friend of the court’ (amicus curiae) submission. The submission is based on a joint economic report by Benson-Strohmayer and independent Sudanese expert Tahany Maalla, which draws on survivor-led research to ask not only what reparations are owed, but how they can reach victims now without being captured by the same networks that sustain Sudan’s war economy. The filing describes the joint report as ‘centrally contributing’ to its observations.

The joint report applies Benson-Strohmayer’s research on ‘predatory peace’, produced through PeaceRep, which shows how settlements and external interventions can legitimise wartime extraction by embedding it within formal post-war fiscal orders. The authors’ proposed reparations framework is designed to work around – and avoid reproducing – Sudan’s predatory political economy, in which war remains profitable. The authors therefore recommend proceeding with reparations during active conflict, using service-based provision through accountable humanitarian and civic networks with safeguards against capture.

The evidence presented to the Chamber draws on a number of PeaceRep outputs, including Of Rule Not Revenue: Predation, State-Unbuilding, and Conflict in Sudan and South Sudan, 1821-2023, for Cambridge University Press; ‘Predatory Peace: Fiscal Fragmentation and Coercive Statebuilding in South Sudan and Beyond’ in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding; ‘Of Rule Not Revenue: South Sudan’s Revenue Complex from Colonial, Rebel, to Independent Rule, 1899 to 2023’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History; and ‘Revenue, Resistance, and Rule: Civic Fiscal Resistance and Statebuilding in Sudan, 1953-2023’, revised and resubmitted to Development and Change.