MIDDLE EAST
Sudan

The Population Council has worked intermittently in Sudan for more than 20 years through the Middle East Research Awards (MEAwards) program. The MEAwards were established in Cairo in 1978 to enhance the capacity of professionals and institutions to conduct research on population in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2004, with support from the Packard Foundation, the Council began capacity-building activities among local institutions, including the Near East Foundation, the Sudan Family Planning Association, the Ahfad University for Women, and the Center for African Family Studies. Within this short time, the Council has developed partnerships with many other local institutions and has now opened an office in Khartoum to carry out its work in coming years.

Program Focus

The goal of the Council’s main program is to foster the capabilities of Sudanese scholars and institutions working in health-related research. The program has a strong service-delivery component focusing mainly on vulnerable populations living in camps around Khartoum for internally displaced persons. This component is designed to provide “best practice models” of service delivery that can be evaluated through operations research to help policymakers evaluate the potential for scaling up successful approaches. Specific objectives include:

• strengthening the capacity of service-delivery nongovernmental organizations to enable them to be sustainable and to expand their programs;
• developing a network of informed reproductive health advocates to promote participatory planning in Sudan; and
• strengthening research capabilities of Sudanese researchers.

The Council intends to pursue more opportunities to expand partnerships and activities in Sudan to address the enormous unmet need for population and reproductive health interventions. To this end, the Council has developed partnerships with the Ministry of Health and such institutions as UNFPA, the Sudan Population Network, the University of Khartoum, and the University of Gezira.

Highlights of Past and Present Work

• Conducted widely acknowledged capacity-building work, including well-attended workshops on improving reproductive health services for displaced persons; and supervising, monitoring, and evaluating reproductive health services.
• Used reproductive health service-delivery sites to promote community awareness of programs devoted to issues such as immunization, HIV and AIDS, nutrition, and skills training.

Selected Projects

Current Projects

• The Protective Role of Education in Humanitarian Emergencies: The Situation of Displaced Sudanese Children and Youth in Darfur (9/07–12/09)

• Enhancing Capacity to Undertake and Utilize Policy-relevant Research in Sudan (7/04–7/07)
• Urban Health and Poverty Survey (4/06–6/07)
• Reproductive Health Situation Analysis in Four States in Sudan (11/06–6/07)

Completed Projects

• Building Capacity in Supervision, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Reproductive Health Services in Sudan (completed 4/07)
• Improving Reproductive Health Services for the Displaced in New Dar El-Salaam El-Rabwa, Khartoum North (completed 4/07)
• Strengthening the Capacity of Ahfad University for Women to Integrate Reproductive Health in their Outreach and Clinical Services (completed 3/07)
• Arabic-language Demography Textbook (completed 12/06)

Publications/Resources on Sudan

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See Also

• Contact Information for Sudan

• Publications/Resources on Sudan
• Middle East Research Awards (MEAwards)

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This page updated 17 March 2008

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