Former Northern Ireland captain Steven Davis says there are “some really good candidates” within the squad to take on the captaincy role on a permanent basis.
Since Jonny Evans retired from international football in August 2024, NI boss Michael O’Neill has opted to rotate the captaincy.
The likes of Conor Bradley, Paddy McNair, Shea Charles and Trai Hume have all worn the armband and Davis, who captained Northern Ireland 82 times, believes whoever is appointed will be deserving of the opportunity.
“There are some really good candidates, Michael has spread the captaincy over the course of the games and he’ll make that final decision, but we have some really good characters”, Davis said.
Davis ‘ learning a lot ‘ in NI coaching role
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Davis was speaking after being inducted into the Dr Malcolm Brodie Hall of Fame at the Northern Ireland Football Writers ‘ Association awards.
He retired in January 2024 after being sidelined for more than a year with a knee injury and holds the UK men’s international caps record with 140 appearances for Northern Ireland.
The former midfielder previously took charge of Rangers as interim manager when Michael Beale was sacked in October 2023.
Since retiring he has been assisting O’Neill in preparation for Northern Ireland’s games as he works towards his coaching badges, a role he has been relishing.
“I got the opportunity out of the blue at Rangers for a couple of games as interim manager which was an unbelievable experience but now I’m with Michael and his staff, I’m learning a lot when I’m away on camps”, he explained.
“It’s really good and I’m doing my coaching badges so looking forward to see what the future holds.
O’Neill ‘ building something special ‘ with NI
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Former Northern Ireland winger Stuart Dallas, who won 62 caps for his country, was inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday alongside Davis.
He believes that O’Neill is” building something special “with the current crop of players prior to the World Cup qualifying campaign starting in September, where the side will face Germany, Slovakia and Luxembourg.
” This is a completely new team, Michael has come back in for a second spell and he’s lost a lot of experience, “he said.
” What they’re doing now, they’re an exciting team you come to Windsor Park, and you enjoy watching Northern Ireland, I think the more games they play the more experience they’ll get. “
While Dallas, who was forced to retire in April 2024 because of a serious knee injury, is excited about the young squad, he thinks expectations should be tempered as many players navigate their first World Cup qualifying experience.
The top United Nations court has dismissed a case brought by Sudan accusing the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of breaching the UN Genocide Convention by arming and funding the rebel paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s deadly civil war.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said on Monday that it “manifestly lacked” the authority to continue the proceedings and threw out the case.
While both Sudan and the UAE are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the UAE has a carveout to the part of the treaty that gives The Hague-based court jurisdiction.
In March, Sudan asked the ICJ for several orders, known as provisional measures, including telling the UAE to do all it can to prevent the killing and other crimes targeting the Masalit people in Darfur.
The UAE called the filing a publicity stunt and, in a hearing last month, argued the court had no jurisdiction.
The court on Monday agreed with the UAE’s arguments, rejected Sudan’s request for emergency measures and ordered the case be removed from its docket.
Due to the lack of jurisdiction, “the court is precluded by its statute from taking any position on the merits of the claims made by Sudan”, a summary of the ruling said.
The UAE hailed it as a legal victory.
“This decision is a clear and decisive affirmation of the fact that this case was utterly baseless. The court’s finding that it is without jurisdiction confirms that this case should never have been brought,” Reem Ketait, deputy assistant minister for political affairs at the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement.
“The facts speak for themselves: the UAE bears no responsibility for the conflict in Sudan. On the contrary, the atrocities committed by the warring parties are well-documented.”
In an earlier statement, Ketait insisted the UAE “is not involved in the war”.
By a 14-to-two vote, the court threw out Sudan’s request for emergency measures to prevent genocidal acts against the Masalit tribe, which has been the focus of intense ethnic-based attacks by the RSF.
Sudan descended into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023 when long-simmering tensions between its military and rival paramilitary forces broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions.
Both the Rapid Support Forces and Sudan’s military have been accused of abuses as they battle each other.
The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and an ally of the United States, has been repeatedly accused of arming the RSF, something it has strenuously denied despite evidence to the contrary.
The top United Nations court has dismissed a case brought by Sudan accusing the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of breaching the UN Genocide Convention by arming and funding the rebel paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s deadly civil war.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said on Monday that it “manifestly lacked” the authority to continue the proceedings and threw out the case.
While both Sudan and the UAE are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the UAE has a carveout to the part of the treaty that gives The Hague-based court jurisdiction.
In March, Sudan asked the ICJ for several orders, known as provisional measures, including telling the UAE to do all it can to prevent the killing and other crimes targeting the Masalit people in Darfur.
The UAE called the filing a publicity stunt and, in a hearing last month, argued the court had no jurisdiction.
The court on Monday agreed with the UAE’s arguments, rejected Sudan’s request for emergency measures and ordered the case be removed from its docket.
Due to the lack of jurisdiction, “the court is precluded by its statute from taking any position on the merits of the claims made by Sudan”, a summary of the ruling said.
The UAE hailed it as a legal victory.
“This decision is a clear and decisive affirmation of the fact that this case was utterly baseless. The court’s finding that it is without jurisdiction confirms that this case should never have been brought,” Reem Ketait, deputy assistant minister for political affairs at the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement.
“The facts speak for themselves: the UAE bears no responsibility for the conflict in Sudan. On the contrary, the atrocities committed by the warring parties are well-documented.”
In an earlier statement, Ketait insisted the UAE “is not involved in the war”.
By a 14-to-two vote, the court threw out Sudan’s request for emergency measures to prevent genocidal acts against the Masalit tribe, which has been the focus of intense ethnic-based attacks by the RSF.
Sudan descended into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023 when long-simmering tensions between its military and rival paramilitary forces broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions.
Both the Rapid Support Forces and Sudan’s military have been accused of abuses as they battle each other.
The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and an ally of the United States, has been repeatedly accused of arming the RSF, something it has strenuously denied despite evidence to the contrary.
Former Cambridge United, Northampton Town and Bury forward Tom Youngs has died at the age of 45.
Born in Bury St Edmunds, Youngs started his career with the U’s after joining the club aged 10, and made 180 appearances between 1997 and 2003. He won promotion to the third tier with Cambridge in 1998-99.
After 30 appearances in an injury-hit three seasons with Northampton, Youngs had a short spell at Leyton Orient before joining Bury in June 2005.
He played 49 league games for the Shakers and scored seven goals in two seasons before a hip injury ended his playing career with non-league Mildenhall Town in 2011.
Youngs was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2014 after moving back to Bury St Edmunds to work as an accountant.
Having studied sports journalism at Staffordshire University, he wrote a memoir entitled, What Dreams are (Not Quite) Made of: No Fame, No Fortune, Just Football… and Multiple Sclerosis.
In their obituary, Cambridge wrote: “Tom will be remembered as a gifted player who, with probing, darting runs, intelligent positioning and poise in front of goal, graced the Abbey Stadium between 1997 and 2003”.
Northampton added: “Tom was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a life-changing event that he faced with the same resilience and honesty that marked his entire career.
On April 11, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the Zamzam displacement camp in Sudan’s North Darfur, burning huts and shops, executing medics, and firing at fleeing civilians.
According to monitors, at least 500 people – men, women, children and the elderly – were killed, and hundreds of thousands were forcibly displaced.
The attack provoked global outrage, prompting the RSF to double down on propaganda it had been spreading for months about Zamzam – that it was actually a military barracks.
“Zamzam was a military zone … so the RSF decided that we should evacuate civilians,” RSF adviser Ali Musabel told Al Jazeera, without providing evidence for his claim. “We didn’t want civilians to get caught in the crossfire.”
By labelling Zamzam a military zone, the RSF was trying to apply the same model Israel uses to justify bombing hospitals and schools in the Gaza Strip, said Rifaat Makawi, a Sudanese human rights lawyer.
“This is not a coincidence: it is a deliberate practice aimed at stripping civilians of their legal protection by labelling them as combatants or instruments of war,” he told Al Jazeera.
A template for genocide
Throughout Sudan’s civil war, the RSF has used human rights jargon and terms from international humanitarian law (IHL) – the legal framework designed to protect civilians in times of war – to carry out atrocities.
For years, Israel employed this practice in an attempt to ward off criticism for killing and oppressing Palestinians, according to legal scholars. Since launching its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it has doubled down.
It claims hospitals in Gaza are Hamas “control-and-command centres” – trying to justify attacking health facilities, which are protected under IHL. It also claims Hamas hides among civilians to use them as “human shields” to justify disproportionate and intentional attacks against those same civilians.
In addition, it has branded its mass expulsions of civilians as “humanitarian” evacuations, giving people hours to pack up their entire lives and get out of the way of Israeli bombs, if they can.
Israel stands accused of genocide by rights groups and United Nations experts for its war that has killed at least 52,567 Palestinians.
And the RSF is increasingly adopting Israel’s strategy, local monitors and legal experts say.
“The fact that the claims made by the RSF in Sudan resemble the claims Israel is making in Gaza … reveals the emergence of a template to commit mass extermination and even genocide,” said Luigi Daniele, a senior lecturer on IHL at Nottingham Law School.
A satellite image shows burning buildings in the Zamzam camp for displaced people in Sudan’s North Darfur after it was taken over by the RSF, April 16, 2025 [Maxar Technologies via Reuters]
The UN accuses both sides in Sudan’s war of committing grave crimes, such as killing and torturing prisoners of war, since a power struggle between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) erupted into an all-out civil war in April 2023.
Human rights groups accuse the RSF of perpetrating additional atrocities, including carrying out a possible genocide against the “non-Arab” communities in Darfur.
From Janjaweed to human rights language
The RSF emerged from the nomadic “Arab” militias in Darfur, which became known as the Janjaweed (devils on horseback in Sudanese Arabic) for the countless atrocities they committed.
The army used the Janjaweed to crush a rebellion by sedentary farming “non-Arab” communities that started in 2003. The sedentary communities were protesting against their political and economic marginalisation in Sudan.
SAF and RSF were closely aligned until at least 2021, when they came together to overthrow the civilian administration with which they had been sharing power after a popular uprising toppled autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
Shortly after the coup, the RSF signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) to receive human rights training.
Now, the RSF and its political allies are using human rights terminology to try to whitewash their atrocities.
On March 8, an RSF-backed political alliance, Tasis (Foundation), tweeted: “We stand in solidarity with Sudanese women in their recent ordeal, where they have faced particularly tragic conditions and been subjected to horrific violations, as a result of the unjust war.”
Tasis made no mention of the reports published by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which accuse the RSF of widespread sexual violence and rape throughout the war.
During the raid on Zamzam, the RSF reportedly abducted 25 women and girls and raped others, according to the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, a local monitor documenting sexual violence in the region.
“What I see today in Darfur, and specifically in Zamzam, is not merely a violation of the IHL, but evidence of its distortion and transformation into a cover under which the gravest crimes are committed,” human rights lawyer Makawi told Al Jazeera.
Finishing the genocide?
The Zamzam camp sprang up in 2003, 15km (9.3 miles) from North Darfur’s capital, el-Fasher, to shelter “non-Arab” Zaghawa and Fur communities, which fled Popular Defence Forces’ violence during the first Darfur war.
Both communities suffered genocidal levels of violence and were expelled from their lands by the state-backed Janjaweed. Zamzam soon became a symbol of the atrocities they endured.
A makeshift bunker dug by civilians in el-Fasher as a hideout from clashes between the RSF and the Sudanese army [File: Muammar Ibrahim/AFP]
Some 350,000 people settled in the camp, swelling to more than half a million as the RSF and the army went to war and the paramilitary group captured South, East, West and Central Darfur states in late 2023.
In April 2024, the RSF besieged el-Fasher and surrounding towns after the Joint Forces – a coalition of “non-Arab” armed groups formed to fight the government in the past – shed their neutrality and sided with the army.
Given the RSF’s track record of enmity towards “non-Arab” ethnic groups, the Joint Forces feared widespread ethnic killings if the RSF captured the entire state.
The RSF blocked aid from anyone not aligned with them, leading to famine in Zamzam. As civilians withered away from hunger, the RSF began claiming that Zamzam was a “military base”, revealing its intention to attack.
“This claim that there was a military base in Zamzam was never correct … we had some people who acted as a police force, but there were no military leaders in the camp,” said Mosab, a middle-aged man who survived the killing in Zamzam and now languishes in the nearby town of Tawila.
Musabel, the RSF adviser, told Al Jazeera that the high civilian death toll was due to the Joint Forces using “human shields”, without providing evidence.
Ethnic cleansing
The RSF has also mimicked the Israeli tactic of carrying out mass expulsions under a humanitarian guise.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has pushed 2.3 million Palestinians into smaller and smaller pockets of land, which it describes as “safe zones” in Gaza.
Israel bombs or invades those areas, claiming they “became military targets” due to the ostensible presence of someone from Hamas there.
“What Israel has done in Gaza, in reality, has been issuing mass expulsion orders under threats of extermination, which is a declaration of intent to commit international crimes,” Nottingham Law School’s Daniele said.
On April 11, Tasis posted on Facebook, calling for civilians to flee Zamzam through what it called “humanitarian corridors” leading to nearby towns such as Tawila and Korma.
Screengrab of the Tasis Facebook post claiming it was helping safe humanitarian evacuations [Screengrab/Facebook]
Yet on April 27, an RSF commander was seen announcing the detention of a group of unarmed men who fled Zamzam through a supposed humanitarian corridor to Tawila, in a video verified by Al Jazeera’s authentication unit, Sanad.
He said the men had sided against their Darfuri brethren and with the traditional elite, represented in the “Arab” Jalaba tribes who live in central and northern Sudan and comprise much of Sudan’s military and political elite. He added that they might kill the detained men to serve as an example to others.
The RSF has framed its war against the army as a fight on behalf of peripheral tribes against the central elite, while at the same time committing egregious abuses against the most marginalised tribes in Darfur.
The detainees were relief workers, according to local monitors, who fear they were killed. Al Jazeera was unable to confirm their fate.
Survivors told Al Jazeera that the RSF had carried out ethnic cleansing, possibly amounting to several war crimes.
“Some of us were executed [by the RSF] along [the road out of Zamzam] and others were violently displaced,” said Mohamed Idriss*, who walked for 13 hours before arriving in el-Fasher.
On April 11, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the Zamzam displacement camp in Sudan’s North Darfur, burning huts and shops, executing medics, and firing at fleeing civilians.
According to monitors, at least 500 people – men, women, children and the elderly – were killed, and hundreds of thousands were forcibly displaced.
The attack provoked global outrage, prompting the RSF to double down on propaganda it had been spreading for months about Zamzam – that it was actually a military barracks.
“Zamzam was a military zone … so the RSF decided that we should evacuate civilians,” RSF adviser Ali Musabel told Al Jazeera, without providing evidence for his claim. “We didn’t want civilians to get caught in the crossfire.”
By labelling Zamzam a military zone, the RSF was trying to apply the same model Israel uses to justify bombing hospitals and schools in the Gaza Strip, said Rifaat Makawi, a Sudanese human rights lawyer.
“This is not a coincidence: it is a deliberate practice aimed at stripping civilians of their legal protection by labelling them as combatants or instruments of war,” he told Al Jazeera.
A template for genocide
Throughout Sudan’s civil war, the RSF has used human rights jargon and terms from international humanitarian law (IHL) – the legal framework designed to protect civilians in times of war – to carry out atrocities.
For years, Israel employed this practice in an attempt to ward off criticism for killing and oppressing Palestinians, according to legal scholars. Since launching its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it has doubled down.
It claims hospitals in Gaza are Hamas “control-and-command centres” – trying to justify attacking health facilities, which are protected under IHL. It also claims Hamas hides among civilians to use them as “human shields” to justify disproportionate and intentional attacks against those same civilians.
In addition, it has branded its mass expulsions of civilians as “humanitarian” evacuations, giving people hours to pack up their entire lives and get out of the way of Israeli bombs, if they can.
Israel stands accused of genocide by rights groups and United Nations experts for its war that has killed at least 52,567 Palestinians.
And the RSF is increasingly adopting Israel’s strategy, local monitors and legal experts say.
“The fact that the claims made by the RSF in Sudan resemble the claims Israel is making in Gaza … reveals the emergence of a template to commit mass extermination and even genocide,” said Luigi Daniele, a senior lecturer on IHL at Nottingham Law School.
A satellite image shows burning buildings in the Zamzam camp for displaced people in Sudan’s North Darfur after it was taken over by the RSF, April 16, 2025 [Maxar Technologies via Reuters]
The UN accuses both sides in Sudan’s war of committing grave crimes, such as killing and torturing prisoners of war, since a power struggle between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) erupted into an all-out civil war in April 2023.
Human rights groups accuse the RSF of perpetrating additional atrocities, including carrying out a possible genocide against the “non-Arab” communities in Darfur.
From Janjaweed to human rights language
The RSF emerged from the nomadic “Arab” militias in Darfur, which became known as the Janjaweed (devils on horseback in Sudanese Arabic) for the countless atrocities they committed.
The army used the Janjaweed to crush a rebellion by sedentary farming “non-Arab” communities that started in 2003. The sedentary communities were protesting against their political and economic marginalisation in Sudan.
SAF and RSF were closely aligned until at least 2021, when they came together to overthrow the civilian administration with which they had been sharing power after a popular uprising toppled autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
Shortly after the coup, the RSF signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) to receive human rights training.
Now, the RSF and its political allies are using human rights terminology to try to whitewash their atrocities.
On March 8, an RSF-backed political alliance, Tasis (Foundation), tweeted: “We stand in solidarity with Sudanese women in their recent ordeal, where they have faced particularly tragic conditions and been subjected to horrific violations, as a result of the unjust war.”
Tasis made no mention of the reports published by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which accuse the RSF of widespread sexual violence and rape throughout the war.
During the raid on Zamzam, the RSF reportedly abducted 25 women and girls and raped others, according to the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, a local monitor documenting sexual violence in the region.
“What I see today in Darfur, and specifically in Zamzam, is not merely a violation of the IHL, but evidence of its distortion and transformation into a cover under which the gravest crimes are committed,” human rights lawyer Makawi told Al Jazeera.
Finishing the genocide?
The Zamzam camp sprang up in 2003, 15km (9.3 miles) from North Darfur’s capital, el-Fasher, to shelter “non-Arab” Zaghawa and Fur communities, which fled Popular Defence Forces’ violence during the first Darfur war.
Both communities suffered genocidal levels of violence and were expelled from their lands by the state-backed Janjaweed. Zamzam soon became a symbol of the atrocities they endured.
A makeshift bunker dug by civilians in el-Fasher as a hideout from clashes between the RSF and the Sudanese army [File: Muammar Ibrahim/AFP]
Some 350,000 people settled in the camp, swelling to more than half a million as the RSF and the army went to war and the paramilitary group captured South, East, West and Central Darfur states in late 2023.
In April 2024, the RSF besieged el-Fasher and surrounding towns after the Joint Forces – a coalition of “non-Arab” armed groups formed to fight the government in the past – shed their neutrality and sided with the army.
Given the RSF’s track record of enmity towards “non-Arab” ethnic groups, the Joint Forces feared widespread ethnic killings if the RSF captured the entire state.
The RSF blocked aid from anyone not aligned with them, leading to famine in Zamzam. As civilians withered away from hunger, the RSF began claiming that Zamzam was a “military base”, revealing its intention to attack.
“This claim that there was a military base in Zamzam was never correct … we had some people who acted as a police force, but there were no military leaders in the camp,” said Mosab, a middle-aged man who survived the killing in Zamzam and now languishes in the nearby town of Tawila.
Musabel, the RSF adviser, told Al Jazeera that the high civilian death toll was due to the Joint Forces using “human shields”, without providing evidence.
Ethnic cleansing
The RSF has also mimicked the Israeli tactic of carrying out mass expulsions under a humanitarian guise.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has pushed 2.3 million Palestinians into smaller and smaller pockets of land, which it describes as “safe zones” in Gaza.
Israel bombs or invades those areas, claiming they “became military targets” due to the ostensible presence of someone from Hamas there.
“What Israel has done in Gaza, in reality, has been issuing mass expulsion orders under threats of extermination, which is a declaration of intent to commit international crimes,” Nottingham Law School’s Daniele said.
On April 11, Tasis posted on Facebook, calling for civilians to flee Zamzam through what it called “humanitarian corridors” leading to nearby towns such as Tawila and Korma.
Screengrab of the Tasis Facebook post claiming it was helping safe humanitarian evacuations [Screengrab/Facebook]
Yet on April 27, an RSF commander was seen announcing the detention of a group of unarmed men who fled Zamzam through a supposed humanitarian corridor to Tawila, in a video verified by Al Jazeera’s authentication unit, Sanad.
He said the men had sided against their Darfuri brethren and with the traditional elite, represented in the “Arab” Jalaba tribes who live in central and northern Sudan and comprise much of Sudan’s military and political elite. He added that they might kill the detained men to serve as an example to others.
The RSF has framed its war against the army as a fight on behalf of peripheral tribes against the central elite, while at the same time committing egregious abuses against the most marginalised tribes in Darfur.
The detainees were relief workers, according to local monitors, who fear they were killed. Al Jazeera was unable to confirm their fate.
Survivors told Al Jazeera that the RSF had carried out ethnic cleansing, possibly amounting to several war crimes.
“Some of us were executed [by the RSF] along [the road out of Zamzam] and others were violently displaced,” said Mohamed Idriss*, who walked for 13 hours before arriving in el-Fasher.
