Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan has announced his resignation with immediate effect.
According to reports, Al-Bashir, 75, has handed over to the Supreme Military Council. The resignation means Sudan would be hoping to have a democratic President for the first time in decades.
There have been ongoing protests in the country since last December. The outpouring has been gaining more momentum in the past few days. Protesters have been calling for the resignation of President Omar al-Bashir.
One of these protests produced an image, which is now being referred to as iconic.
The young woman in the image is Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old architecture student in Khartoum.
Salah said she was happy that the image, taken on Monday evening at a demonstration in the Sudanese capital, had been viewed so widely.
“I’m very glad that my photo let people around the world know about the revolution in Sudan … Since the beginning of the uprising I have been going out every day. I participate in the demonstrations because my parents raised me to love our home.”
According to Marie Grace Brown, an assistant history professor at the University of Kansas, the white thobe is an iconic dress that Sudanese women wore throughout the 20th century.
“Beginning in the 1940s and ’50s, Sudanese women activists consciously wore the white thobe as a modest garment that was a way of standing in a way of contrast to their radical and outspoken demands, and so by wearing the white thobe, this woman is evoking the fashions of past generations.”