Sudan declares UN envoy Volker Perthes ‘persona non grata’

World
By William

UN chief Antonio Guterres said last month that he was “appalled” by the request to replace the special envoy to Sudan.

Sudan has informed the United Nations that it has declared Volker Perthes, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Sudan and head of the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission, Sudan (UNITAMS), “persona non grata”.

“The Government of the Republic of Sudan has notified the Secretary-General of the United Nations that it has declared Mr. Volker Perthes persona non grata,” the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday.

Perthes was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday for a series of diplomatic talks, according to the UN mission’s Twitter feed.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said late last month that he was “appalled” by a letter from Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, allegedly asking for the replacement of his special envoy, Perthes.

“[Guterres] is proud of the work of Volker Perthes and reaffirms its full confidence in its Special Representative,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement at the time.

Perthes, a former academic who has led the Sudan mission since 2021, has firmly defended the UN against allegations of fueling the conflict, saying those responsible are “the two generals at war”.

Fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has ravaged the capital Khartoum and the western region of Darfur since April.

Entire districts of Khartoum have lost running water, electricity is only available for a few hours a week and three-quarters of hospitals in combat zones are out of order.

According to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 1.4 million people have been internally displaced within Sudan and another 476,800 have fled to neighboring countries, most of them already struggling with poverty and internal conflict.

The Sudanese Ministry of Health has recorded at least 780 civilian deaths as a direct result of the fighting. Hundreds more have been killed in the town of el-Geneina in Western Darfur.

According to the UN, about 25 million people — more than half of Sudan’s population — are now in need of humanitarian assistance and aid has been delivered since late May that could help about 2.2 million people.

Last week, the precarious status of the UN in Sudan was highlighted when the Security Council voted to extend UNITAMS’s mandate for just six months.

UNITAMS was established in June 2020 to support Sudan’s democratic transition following the fall of ruler Omar al-Bashir a year earlier. UNITAMS’s mandate had previously been extended annually for one year.

You might also like More from author