French Sudan (French: Soudan) was a colony in French West Africa that had two separate periods of existence, first from 1890 to 1899, then from 1920 to 1960, when the territory became the independent nation of Mali.

French Sudan was created as a French territory on 9 September 1880, as "Upper Senegal", and was renamed the "French Sudan Territory" on 18 August 1890, with its capital at Kayes. On 10 October 1899, French Sudan was broken up; 11 southern provinces went to French Guinea, the Côte d'Ivoire and Dahomey, although two were returned in the following year.

In 1902 the parts of the colony not organized into military districts became Senegambia and Niger, then Upper Senegal and Niger in 1904, then the old name came back in a reorganization of 1920.

When the French Upper Volta was first abolished in 1933 (it was reestablished in 1947), French Sudan gained some of its provinces.

After the French constitutional referendum of 4 October 1958, the "République Soudanaise" became a member of the French Community, once again with the name French Sudan, and gained complete internal autonomy 25 November 1958.

Sudan (ⁱ/suːˈdæn/ or /suːˈdɑːn/;Arabic: السودان‎, as-Sūdān), officially the Republic of the Sudan (Arabic: جمهورية السودان‎, Jumhūrīyat as-Sūdān), sometimes called North Sudan, is an Arab state in North Africa (sometimes also considered to be part of the Middle East). It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, and Libya to the northwest. The population of Sudan is a combination of indigenous inhabitants of Nile Valley, and descendants of migrants from the Arabian Peninsula. Due to the process of Arabisation common throughout the rest of the Arab World, today Arab culture predominates in Sudan. The majority of the population of Sudan adheres to Islam. The Nile divides the country between east and west sides.

The people of Sudan have a long history extending from antiquity which is intertwined with the history of Egypt. Sudan suffered seventeen years of civil war during the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972) followed by ethnic, religious and economic conflicts between the Muslim Arab northern Sudanese and the mostly animist and Christian Nilotes of Southern Sudan. This led to the Second Sudanese Civil War in 1983. Because of continuing political and military struggles, Sudan was seized in a bloodless coup d'état by colonel Omar al-Bashir in 1989, who thereafter proclaimed himself President of Sudan. The civil war ended with the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement which granted autonomy to what was then the southern region of the country. Following a referendum held in January 2011, South Sudan seceded on 9 July 2011 with the consent of Sudan's President al-Bashir.

Mukesh Kapila CBE has worked extensively and advised in crisis and conflict management, humanitarian affairs, post-conflict recovery and development, and HIV and AIDS. Kapila is currently Special Representative for the Aegis Trust.

Kapila's background is in medicine, public health and, subsequently, international development and humanitarian affairs. He has qualifications from the Universities of Oxford and London.

As a mid-level civil servant in 1994, he was part of the first British teams to see the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide after entering Rwandan Patriotic Front-controlled Kigali.

He was the Deputy Director of the National UK AIDS programme during the 1990s.^{[citation needed]}

He was Head of Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs unit of the British Department for International Development from 1998 to 2002. From 2002-2003, Kapila was a Special Adviser to the United Nations, first to the Special Representative of the Secretary General in Afghanistan and then to the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2003-2004 Kapila was the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, and the UN Development Program Resident Representative for the Sudan.

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (born October 12, 1949), also known as Carlos the Jackal, is a Venezuelan currently serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder of two French counter-intelligence agents and an informant for the French government. While in prison he was further convicted of attacks in France that killed 11 and injured 150 people and sentenced to an additional life term.

A committed Marxist-Leninist ideologue, Ramírez Sánchez is widely regarded as one of the most famous political terrorists of his era. When he joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1970, recruiting officer Bassam Abu Sharif gave him the code name "Carlos" due to his South American roots. After several bungled bombings, Ramírez Sánchez achieved notoriety for a 1975 raid on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, which killed three people. This was followed by a string of attacks against Western targets. For many years he was among the most wanted international fugitives. Carlos was dubbed "The Jackal" by The Guardian after one of its correspondents reportedly spotted Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal near some of the fugitive's belongings.