SUDAN-FBL-WOMEN-RIGHTS

Sudanese woman football player Rayan Rajab, 22, takes part in a training session at a stadium in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on November 20, 2019. Within months of Sudan's first women's football league kicking off, the championship's emerging stars are being hailed as icons for equal rights in a country transitioning to civilian rule. Once a football pioneer, it joined FIFA in 1948 and co-founding the Confederation of African Football with Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa at a meeting in Khartoum in 1957. But women's football faced an uphill battle after the country adopted the Islamic sharia law in 1983, six years before then-brigadier Bashir seized power in an Islamist-backed coup. (Photo by ASHRAF SHAZLY / AFP) (Photo by ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP via Getty Images)