In a society where the gross majority of women are forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) during childhood, being uncircumcised often results in ostracism.

Devastated by heavy fighting during Sudan’s civil war, Southern Kordofan is gradually transforming itself from an area of humanitarian emergency to one of cautious progress.

On a cool starry night, thousands of people have gathered at Juba’s Nyakuron Cultural Centre to attend the sixth annual Miss Malaika New Sudan beauty pageant.

Uganda was one of eight foreign countries designated for voting in last month’s historic Southern Sudan referendum on self-determination. Nearly 99 per cent of the 58,203 ballots cast by Southern Sudanese living overseas backed the region’s secession from the rest of the country, and the 12,330 voters who trekked to polling centres in Uganda overwhelmingly embraced the separation option.

As the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) enters the final six months of the interim period of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the future of oil, its largest revenue earner, remains uncertain.

The Equatoria Hotel was the only lodging of its kind operating in what would become the Southern Sudanese capital of Juba when the country's peace accord was signed in January 2005.

When Santino Mayen enrolled in a primary school in the Western Bahr El-Ghazal State capital of Wau in 2005, Southern Sudan was just beginning to recover from two decades of civil war that had crippled its educational system.

Jackson Joshua Jada walked up to a polling centre in the Kator district of Juba at 1 a.m. on 9 January to ensure he would be its first voter in Southern Sudan’s long-awaited referendum on self-determination.

Tens of thousands of internally displaced Sudanese have been heading back to their southern roots with little more than a few household items and the shirts on their backs.