The facility is maintained by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), a UN organization.

[1] The UNDF served as the detention center for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) until its closure in 2015.

Established in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the UNDF is an 89-cell institution located within a high security prison compound five miles outside the city of Arusha.

It was exclusively mandated to hold individuals indicted for, or suspected of, having committed war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) or the IRMCT.

They included the former Rwandan Army Chief of Staff Augustin Bizimungu, the pop singer Simon Bikindi, along with former Minister of Defense Théoneste Bagosora.