Tennis legend Boris Becker has highlighted the ongoing crisis in Sudan and called out global powers for not taking notice of the situation in the conflict-mauled African nation.
“When are we gonna talk about Sudan..By far the biggest humanitarian crisis today, yet nobody seems to notice! Yes, Sudan has natural resources in case rich countries want to make a deal!?!” the yesteryear tennis star wrote on X.
The German star, who was called Boom Boom Becker for his big serves, is a former world number 1 tennis player and Wimbledon champion. He became an entrepreneur and a TV analyst after retirement.
He is right in many ways. This is the 22nd month of the latest Sudan conflict and yet it has not got as much global attention as, say, Lebanon has.
On April 15, 2023, violent clashes started between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, leading to the displacement of over 11.5 million people.
Horrific crimes have taken place in Sudan since the start of the conflict. In October 2024, Human Rights Watch reported that 79 girls and women, between the ages of 7 and 50, were raped during the conflict.As of January 2025, about 150,000 have been killed because of the conflict, The New York Timesreported.
Historically, Sudan is plagued by severe weather events linked to climate change, including floods and droughts that leads to livestock and crop destruction and creates food insecurity. And now, with two-year-long conflict, the situation has exacerbated with about 26 million needing assistance.
The United Nations has called the situation in Sudan as “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history”.
The war in Sudan has intensified in recent months, with the military making steady advances against the RSF in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.
Boris Becker doesn’t speak much on politics or international affairs, at least in public. A cursory glance of his X posts show that he mostly comments on and analyses things related to sports.
But he does have a political life.
In January, 2018 he came into news for calling out an Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP for posting a "clearly racist" tweet about his son.
In April 27, 2018, Becker became the Central African Republic’s attaché to the European Union on sporting and humanitarian affairs. He received diplomatic immunity.
One year before that, Becker was declared bankrupt over debts to Arbuthnot Latham & Co. But after his diplomatic position he became immune from being pursued for further payments.
But the CAR’s foreign minister, Charles Armel Doubane, told German daily Die Welt that “Boris Becker is not an official diplomat of Central African Republic.”
“I have now asserted diplomatic immunity ... in order to bring this farce to an end, so that I can start to rebuild my life,” Becker claimed (WHEN), as reported by Reuters.
He evoked the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic relations, which gives immunity to diplomats.
The Central African Republic (CAR) shares its north-east and eastern border with Sudan. The conflict in Sudan has had a spillover effect on the CAR, which is already suffering from a high poverty rate and decades of instability and violence since its independence from France in 1960.
