Earlier this year, when heavy rains caused massive flooding in Sudan, a three-month state of emergency was declared in September. The floods which began in July, were the worst the country experienced in the last three decades and affected some 830,000 people, including 125,000 refugees and internally displaced people.
This week, when Sudan's Minister of Energy and Mining Adil Ibrahim addressed the country, stating that households will face power-cuts for up to seven hours a day, people had already been sitting on plastic chairs outside their homes, scouring the internet to purchase battery-operated fans. This Northeast African nation has seen temperature highs of up to 41 degrees Celsius recently.
Omnia Nabil*, a Sudanese doctor, who worked in one of the largest hospitals in Khartoum, the country’s capital, was devastated to witness the deaths of 50 young women who had unsafe abortions during a space of just three months.
Lawyers and rights activists are calling for a change in Sudan’s laws which allow for the marriage of girls as young as 10.
More and more of Sudan’s female politicians and rights activists are being arrested and detained in the government’s clampdown on opposition political parties.
The multi-billion dollar Merowe Dam on the Nile River more than doubled Sudan's electricity supply, but its environmental impacts are still unknown to the public, and communities whose villages were flooded have not yet received compensation.
China, a major player in the oil industries of South Sudan and Sudan, could use its influence to stop the escalating violence between the two countries that has seen the displacement of thousands of people and a reduction in oil production, a United States State Department official says.
While humanitarian organisations try to bury the corpses scattered across Southern Kordofan, aid to the thousands of people displaced by the fighting is slow as the country's humanitarian commission has prohibited most aid organisations from working in the area.
Women in the Sudanese region of Darfur have been raped with impunity since the start of the conflict there in 2003. Now a campaign to reform the rape law is gaining momentum in the country, promoted by Alliance 149, a national coalition born in late 2009.