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Volker Perthes: The UN envoy is currently in Ethiopia

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Alessandro Della Valle / dpa

UN Special Envoy Volker Perthes has long been the target of protests in Sudan. Now the government of the crisis-stricken country has declared the German an undesirable person. "The Government of the Republic of Sudan has informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations that it has declared Mr. Volker Perthes persona non grata as of today," the Foreign Ministry in Khartoum said on Thursday. The military ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had called for the removal of Perthes and blamed him for the start of the fighting between his army and the paramilitary RSF militia in mid-April.

In a letter to the UN, Al-Burhan had accused the UN representative of having "concealed" the explosive situation in Khartoum before the start of the fighting in his reports. Without these "lies," the rebel leader (Mohamed Hamdan) "Daglo would not have started his military actions," the military ruler argued.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres then expressed "his full confidence" in his envoy. At the beginning of June, however, the UN Security Council extended the mandate for the UN Mission in Sudan (Unitams), which is headed by Perthes, by only six months. Previously, the mission, which was created in June 2020, had always been extended by twelve months.

The clashes between al-Burhan's army and the paramilitary RSF militia of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo were ignited in mid-April by the planned incorporation of the RSF into the army. Since then, about 1800 people have been killed and more than 1.3 million more have been displaced. According to UN figures, 25 of the 45 million Sudanese are dependent on humanitarian aid due to the war.

Since last year, Perthes and the UN mission in Sudan have been the target of protests by supporters of the military government. Thousands of demonstrators repeatedly accused the special envoy of "foreign interference". Perthes was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday for a series of diplomatic talks, the UN had previously announced on Twitter.

Perthes is a German political scientist and was director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. In 2015, he was invited by the UN Special Envoy for Syria to the UN talks for a peace process in Syria. Since January 2021, he has been leading the mission in Sudan.

asc/AFP