Sudan declares UN envoy Volker Perthes 'persona non grata'

UN envoy to Sudan Volker Perthes is a “persona non grata”, the Sudanese government has said, as it pushes to have him removed from his position.

The development comes two week after the country's de facto leader, army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, accused him of stoking the civil conflict.

“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 as of today,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday.

The UN official and his team have been criticised by the military and faced protests in Sudan against foreign interference.

Row with Sudan's authorities

Gen Al Burhan blamed the envoy last month for exacerbating fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by Gen Mohamed Dagalo.

In his letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres, he accused Mr Perthes, 64, of bias and of not respecting “national sovereignty”.

He said the envoy presented a misleading picture of "consensus” in his reports to the UN, and that “without these signs of encouragement, the rebel leader Mr Dagalo would not have launched his military operations”.

It has not been possible to verify who fired the first shots of the war.

Mr Guterres has repeatedly defended Mr Perthes, who criticised the warring parties and said those responsible were “the two generals at war”.

Mr Perthes, who has denied claims that the world body is inflaming the conflict, was in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday for a series of talks, according to the Twitter feed of the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan.

The precarious nature of the UN's status in Sudan was highlighted last week when the Security Council voted to extend its mission there for only six months.

Created in June 2020 to support Sudan's democratic transition after the fall of military ruler Omar Al Bashir a year earlier, the mission's mandate had previously been renewed annually.

Who is Volker Perthes?

Mr Perthes is a German academic and political scientist who speaks fluent English and Arabic.

He was appointed as the UN's envoy to Sudan by Mr Guterres in January 2021, four months after taking up the post of senior adviser at Berlin's German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

"Volker Perthes brings to this position over 25 years of experience in academia, research, international relations and diplomacy, including with the United Nations, as well as deep expertise in conflict resolution and regional geopolitics," Mr Guterres said at the time.

He worked for the UN's special envoy to Syria from 2015 to 2016 before taking several teaching positions in Germany and Libya.

Sudan's stuttering path to civilian rule was disrupted in 2021 when Gen Al Burhan and Gen Dagalo seized power in a coup before falling out.

Fighting between the army and the RSF has gripped Khartoum and the western region of Darfur since April, with a series of truces ignored.