Sudan has ordered two senior UN officials to leave, a UN spokesman said on Thursday, after a recent spike in tensions between Khartoum and the peacekeeping mission in Darfur.
UN resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator Ali Zaatari and UN Development Program country director Yvonne Helle have been asked to leave, said a UN staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the body has protested the expulsions.
“The UN has filed a protest with the government of Sudan following their decision to request the departure of two senior UN officials from the country,” Dujarric told reporters.
He said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “condemns” the move and urged Sudan to “immediately” reverse the decision and cooperate with UN entities in the country.
“The sanctioning of United Nations personnel sent to Sudan to carry out their duties in accordance with the United Nations Charter is unacceptable,” Dujarric added.
It was unclear why the UN officials were asked to leave, or when they would have to exit the country. The UN staffer declined to provide further details.
The UN Development Program and the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.
Zaatari, a Jordanian national, had been in Sudan for nearly two years.
Helle, who is from the Netherlands, had spent about a year heading the program’s office in the country.
The expulsions come as the Sudanese government is locked in a dispute with the hybrid UN-African Union Mission in Darfur.
Ties between the two have frayed over Khartoum’s anger at the mission’s attempts to investigate a report that government troops raped 200 women and girls in a village in the war-torn western region on Oct. 31.
Sudan demanded that the mission form an “exit strategy” from Darfur — where it has been deployed since 2007 — and ordered it to close down a human rights office in Khartoum last month.
Zaatari and Helle’s expulsion are the latest in a string of incidents with foreign aid and humanitarian workers in Sudan.
In April, the government told the US head of the UN Population Fund in Sudan to leave for “interfering” in internal affairs.
The UN and non-governmental organizations provide aid to some of the areas of Sudan worst affected by the conflicts wracking its peripheries.
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