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Celebrating Ramadan around the world: Sudan
26 September 2008
“The month of Ramadan emphasises the virtues of generosity, sacrifice and sympathy”
- DFID Minister Shahid Malik
To mark Ramadan, on the DFID website throughout September DFID employees and other development workers from around the world will be describing their own experiences of the holiest month in the Islamic calendar.
Sarra Deya Ismail works for DFID in Sudan. In the film below, Sarra explains what Ramadan means to her and how her faith informs her work helping Sudan's poorest people.
Click on the links at the top of the page to view previous Ramadan diaries, and use the Google Map below to explore DFID projects in Sudan.
Find out more
Image courtesy of
Eric Miller/Panos
More about Sudan, its development challenges and what DFID is doing to help:
Challenges
- Forty per cent of Sudan's people live below the poverty line.
- Sudan has been in a state of civil war for most of the last 50 years. Despite the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006 the conflict continues.
- In the last twenty years of fighting over two million people have died and four million people have been displaced.
- In 2006 5.52 million people were reliant on food aid, 2.5 million of them in Darfur.
- Five per cent of women die in childbirth (compared to 0.07% in the UK).
- Over half the people living in Sudan do not have access to safe drinking water.
- Only massive international aid – the world’s largest humanitarian response – is preventing complete catastrophe in the country.
What is DFID doing?
- In the past five years DFID has provided $667 million in aid to Sudan out of a total of $2201 million from the international community. In the coming year it will provide $210 million.
- April 13 2008 was the Global day for Darfur. Prime Minister Gordon Brown marked the day by pledging to work with the UN and African Union to end the suffering.
- DFID has been the second largest bilateral donor in Darfur since 2003. Our aid is targeted at responding to those areas of extreme need at which the Sudanese Government has not targeted resources (for example in Darfur).
