Appointment to become AU Special Envoy to Darfur

"You would recall that, Former Swedish Foreign Minister and President of the UN General Assembly, Jan Eliasson and I were appointed respectively by the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Chairperson of the African Union to serve as Special Envoys for Darfur, following the High Level consultations between the African Union, the United Nations and the Government of Sudan (GoS), held here in Addis Ababa, on 16 November 2006. The mandate given to us was to re-energize the political peace process by bringing the GoS and the non signatories to the negotiating table with the aim of achieving a more inclusive and durable solution to the conflict in Darfur.

Since then, with the assistance of a very capable and dedicated AU-UN Joint Mediation Support Team based in Khartoum, we undertook several missions and conducted intensive consultations with a large spectrum of Darfur stakeholders, including the Government, the DPA signatory and non-signatory movements, neighboring countries and other regional actors, international partners, traditional leaders, civil society organizations, intellectuals, representatives of IDPs, women and youth groups, international NGOs, and others, with the view to assessing their positions vis-a-vis the situation and the prospects for a just and lasting settlement of the Darfur crisis."