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Foreign Minister Maas on the coup in the Sudan and Germany’s engagement in the country

27.10.2021 - Press release

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas issued the following statement today (27 October) regarding the coup in the Sudan and Germany’s engagement in the country:

The military coup in the Sudan is a catastrophic development. It is putting the country in a perilous situation and is calling the Sudan’s democratic and peaceful future, an objective that the international community has been working to achieve, into question.

I condemn the actions of the military, which has not only illegally detained Prime Minister Hamdok and others, but has also taken violent steps against those protesting yesterday for the cause of democracy in the Sudan, in the strongest possible terms. General al-Burhan and his supporters must not be allowed to obstruct the path of democracy. Prime Minister Hamdok and the other individuals who have been detained must be released without delay and the ousting of the civilian-led interim government must be rescinded.

The people in the Sudan and Prime Minister Hamdok continue to have our support.

If it is not ended immediately, the coup by the military will have severe consequences for the international engagement that Germany has been instrumental in supporting and coordinating in recent years. The coup is undermining the very foundations of this engagement. Germany will not continue its support under these conditions. We are liaising closely with our partners with a view to the joint way forward.

Background Information:

At the conference on the Sudan in Berlin in June 2020, more than 50 countries and international organisations signalled their strong support for Khartoum, both politically and financially. Some 1.8 billion USD were earmarked for Sudan. Since then, the Federal Government has monitored the implementation of the outcome of the conference as part of the informal Friends of Sudan group. The Friends of Sudan, which was established at Germany’s initiative back in June 2019, consists, alongside the US, of a large number of EU member states, as well as the World Bank and the IMF and countries in the region. A conference call was held on October 26 with the members of the informal Friends of Sudan group.

Since the Sudan conference in Berlin, a Sudanese social programme to alleviate the impact of economic reforms has been launched in cooperation with the World Bank. The Sudan conference also injected important impetus into the country’s debt relief process. Moreover, Germany is lending its support both financially and in terms of personnel to the civilian UN mission UNITAMS, which is headed by the German Volker Perthes.

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