Chairman of Sudan’s Sovereign Council General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has appointed former UN official Kamil El-Tayib Idris as prime minister.

The state news agency SUNA said on Monday that Idris’ appointment came in a decree issued by Burhan, who is also the army chief.

Idris is a former UN official and an ex-presidential candidate.

The appointment installs a prime minister for the first time since January 2022, when Abdalla Hamdok resigned amid a political deadlock that turned one year later into a civil war still raging in the country.

Sovereign council gets female members

Last month, Burhan appointed career diplomat Dafallah al-Haj as acting prime minister.

Burhan also issued another decree appointing two women, Salma Al-Mubarak and Nawara Abu Mohamed Tahir, to the Sovereign Council, raising the council’s members to nine.

Since April 2023, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group has been battling the army for control of Sudan, resulting in thousands of deaths and creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

More than 20,000 people have been killed and 15 million displaced, according to the UN and local authorities. Research from US scholars, however, puts the death toll at around 130,000.