Two Continents, One Question: When Does Accountability Arrive?
A $35 million settlement for Epstein's victims and a UN report on RSF atrocities in Sudan reveal the uneven terrain of international justice, where financial redress moves swiftly but genocide accountability remains elusive.
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The machinery of justice operates at different speeds depending on geography, power, and the nature of the crime. This week brought two stark reminders of this disparity: Jeffrey Epstein's estate agreed to pay $35 million to settle claims from sex trafficking victims, while a United Nations report documented attacks by Sudan's Rapid Support Forces against non-Arab communities that may constitute genocide.
The contrast is instructive. One case involves the estate of a deceased financier whose crimes against young women and girls have been acknowledged, documented, and monetized. The other concerns ongoing violence against entire ethnic groups in a country where the international community's influence remains limited and the perpetrators continue to operate with impunity.
The Price of Complicity
According to a court filing reported by Sowetan Live, the Epstein estate settlement resolves a class action lawsuit that accused two of the disgraced financier's advisers of "aiding and abetting his sex trafficking of young women and teenage girls." The $35 million figure represents not an admission of the harm's true cost, but rather the pragmatic endpoint of legal negotiation—a number large enough to appear substantial, small enough to close the books.
The settlement follows years of litigation and public outcry over Epstein's decades-long abuse network, which operated with the knowledge and assistance of numerous associates. While Epstein himself died in custody in 2019, his estate has become the focal point for victims seeking some form of redress. The involvement of advisers in the settlement acknowledges what many have long argued: that such systematic abuse requires infrastructure, and infrastructure requires enablers.
For victims, financial settlements offer tangible recognition of harm, even as they can never restore what was taken. The class action mechanism allows for collective redress, spreading compensation across multiple claimants while avoiding the retraumatization of individual trials. Yet the speed with which this settlement materialized—relative to the pace of criminal accountability for Epstein's associates—reveals how civil litigation can outpace criminal justice when wealth is available to distribute.
When Atrocities Continue Unchecked
Half a world away, the question of accountability takes on a more desperate character. The UN Mission's report on Sudan, as detailed by SABC News, found that RSF attacks included "killings of members of a protected ethnic group"—language that invokes the legal definition of genocide under international law. The findings point to a pattern of violence targeting non-Arab communities, suggesting not random brutality but systematic elimination.
The careful phrasing—"possible genocide"—reflects the legal caution required before such a grave charge can be formally leveled. Genocide, as defined by the 1948 Convention, requires proof of intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Establishing that intent demands extensive documentation, witness testimony, and analysis of patterns. The UN report represents a step in that evidentiary process, but it is only a step.
Unlike the Epstein case, where the perpetrator is dead and his estate liquid, the RSF remains an active military force engaged in Sudan's ongoing civil conflict. There is no estate to sue, no neutral court with jurisdiction, no enforcement mechanism that can compel accountability while the violence continues. The international criminal justice system, embodied in institutions like the International Criminal Court, operates on timelines measured in years and decades, often acting only after conflicts have concluded and power has shifted.
The Geography of Justice
The juxtaposition of these two cases illuminates uncomfortable truths about how accountability functions in the international system. Financial settlements can be negotiated and paid relatively quickly when assets are identifiable and parties are willing to settle. Criminal accountability for mass atrocities, by contrast, requires political will, international cooperation, and often regime change before perpetrators face trial.
For Epstein's victims, the settlement offers a measure of closure, however incomplete. For the communities targeted by the RSF, the UN report may serve as historical documentation and a foundation for future prosecution, but it provides no immediate protection or redress. The victims in both cases deserve justice, yet the mechanisms available to them operate in entirely different registers.
As these parallel stories unfold, they pose a question that extends beyond either individual case: What does it mean for the international legal order when accountability arrives swiftly for some crimes and remains perpetually deferred for others? The answer may lie not in the law itself, but in the power dynamics that determine which violations receive urgent attention and which are relegated to the slow grind of diplomatic process.
The Epstein settlement will be distributed, the legal files closed. The RSF attacks continue. Justice, it seems, remains a privilege unevenly distributed across the map of human suffering.