Senior Distinguished Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). He is a former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (January 2021 to March 2024), serving as Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Sudan and Head of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) from 2021 to 2023. Prior to this, from October 2005 to September 2020, Volker Perthes was Executive Chairman and Director of SWP (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik), the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. In 2015-2016, he also served as UN Assistant Secretary-General and Senior Advisor to the UN Special Envoy for Syria; from 2016 to 2018 he chaired the Ceasefire Task Force (CTF) for Syria on behalf of the UN. Volker Perthes earned his doctoral degree in 1990 from the University of Duisburg. He was an assistant professor at the American University of Beirut from 1991 to 1993 and has been teaching International Relations at Humboldt University Berlin and other schools.
For a reasonably open world
