Munzir is hunched over in a chair when we get to the office of a displacement camp for the undocumented in Sudan’s capital.

He looks defeated and sullen. His leg is wrapped in gauze and his crutches are leaning against the wall by the side of the chair.

Two months ago, a stray bullet hit his leg in army-held territory in Omdurman and he was taken to the largest remaining functioning hospital in the area, Al Nao Hospital.

Ask Yousra a question about this story

After being discharged, and unable to walk without support, he was brought to Osman Makkawi shelter for patients with no home to return to.

Here, he has joined the missing. The camp is home to dozens of wounded civilians who do not have ID or a way to contact their loved ones.

For two years of war, Munzir has not been able to go to his house in southern Khartoum as battles raged for control of the capital. Bridges were targeted by snipers belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and uncrossable for civilians.

At least 50,000 people have been separated from their families during the first two years of Sudan’s civil war, according to local human rights groups.

This shocking statistic is likely a gross underestimate and has remained staggeringly high even as hundreds of detainees were freed after the army reclaimed Khartoum from the RSF in late March.

Munzir was told his family fled to their ancestral home in Damazin, eastern Sudan and had no means to make the journey across the White Nile Bridge connecting Omdurman to the heart of the capital once it became accessible.

In the murkiness of war, one man has been tirelessly working to change Munzir’s sad reality.

Mohamed Alfatih is the head of a charity called Resilience. He runs Osman Makkawi camp through donations and has launched a social media campaign to find Munzir’s family.

“We have reunited 287 people with their families and we are set on Munzir becoming our 288th.”

Through Facebook, he has managed to connect with Munzir’s uncle who told Mohamed that his mother is still at home in Mayo, southern Khartoum. But there are no guarantees – Mayo is still rife with militants and the army is known to move civilians around for security reasons.

“We work with facts. We have received this information from his uncle and this is the first real tip we get about Munzir’s mother’s whereabouts,” Mohamed says.

“We hope to God that he finds his mother at home.”

This information is enough for Mohamed to take Munzir to check.

It’s Munzir’s first journey home since a month before the war started in April 2023. Every few moments he says: “I just pray my mother is home.”

As he crosses White Nile Bridge into al-Mogran – the landmark Khartoum location at the confluence of the White and Blue Niles – he looks around with wide eyes.

“Two years without seeing Khartoum or the Nile. I am just happy to see it. We used to bathe here on the banks.”

As we drive into Khartoum, he starts crying. These are tears of joy. He cannot believe he is back home and heading towards his family. Only the destruction around us can interrupt the relief and his crying turns into a look of shock and despair.

“I cannot believe the damage. I heard about it but seeing it is chilling.”

As we get closer to his neighbourhood, he is nervous and overwhelmed. We will have to check different displacement shelters around the area if his family are not at home.

“What if she’s not there?” I ask.

“Patience. I will have to have patience,” he replies with the thought darkening his face.

We finally make it to the house. Munzir leaps out and moves quickly towards the door with his crutches.

The outside area of his house is closed off with white corrugated iron that looks unfamiliar to him.

He taps on the door and looks out with stress and uncertainty as we wait for seconds that feel like a long minute.

There is a sound of children in the house and the door opens. A little boy looks up and there is a pause of shock before he breaks out into a smile. “Hey!” he says and runs back into the house out of sight.

He alerts an adult and runs back out as a woman comes into the front yard from inside the house.

“My son!” Khadija yells. “My son!”

She grabs hold of him and wails as two years of anguish and worry pour out of her.

After five full minutes of crying, she finally starts to speak.

“I’ve been waiting for him for so long. Losing my son made me sick, I could barely walk and had to creep against the walls to keep myself up. I thought I would die,” she tells us, weakened from the sobbing and long sleepless nights.

Her sister Nagwa comes to see her nephew whom she raised like a son. She greets us as she walks into the living room with her eyes searching for Munzir.

Read more:
Panic grows in Sudan’s wartime capital
Sky reporter returns to ruined family home
Paramilitary chief’s rival government

“Munzir!” she exclaims as she hugs him with sobs. “We were searching for you but had no money to find you.”

From the yard, we hear celebrations break out in the neighbourhood. Streams of guests start to arrive to congratulate the family and greet Munzir.

One after the other, he shakes the hands of his neighbours.

For this family, the worst of the war is over. Their son has come home, wounded but alive, and the days ahead of shelling, drone strikes and rampant crime will never compare to the pain of thinking he may be dead.

A glimmer of warmth and relief in the relentless cycle of violence in Sudan’s war.

“Good luck, because it’s a shithole here,” a prisoner shouts as we walk around the grounds at HMP Foston Hall.

Other inmates described this women’s prison in Derbyshire as a “holiday camp”, even “rehab”.

There was no one homogenous view, but there is also not one type of prisoner here – it is home to both murderers and shoplifters.

We’ve come to talk to people ahead of the publication of the sentencing review in the coming days. It’s likely to recommend the scrapping of short sentences for some lower-level crimes, and suggest prison isn’t the best place to punish certain “vulnerable” groups of offenders, including women.

“My kind of theft, I nick chocolate from shops,” inmate Connie Parsons told us as we gathered in her cell.

She’s been convicted of shoplifting nine times and says she’s been in and out of prison since she was 15 years old.

“I normally only get four weeks, three weeks, two weeks. It’s a constant cycle of going out, committing crime,” she said.

Ask Mollie a question about this story

At points, Parsons has been homeless and addicted to drugs.

“I used to just come to prison before to have a little lie down and get myself well… to keep myself safe,” she said. “But this prison, you’re not safe… I never self-harmed before I came to this prison. And now I self-harm quite a lot.”

She has a young teenage son on the outside. “I know this might sound harsh, but I think it’s got to the point now I don’t know what to miss about him. But I think about him every single day,” she said.

‘For lots of women, prison is the right place to be’

We put Parsons’ case to the prisons minister, Lord Timpson, who said it was “really sad to hear”, adding he sees “lots of people like Connie” in the prison system.

Pressed on how some will view Parsons as a repeat offender, perhaps deserving of prison, Lord Timpson said: “For lots of women, prison is the right place to be, but where there are certain circumstances, for example non-violent offences for women… you need to work out what is the right path to make sure they don’t commit further crime.”

Lord Timpson said for someone like Parsons, he’d like to see the use of an intensive supervision court or as he called it “problem-solving court”. These work by judges monitoring the progress of offenders on community sentences, offering “wraparound” support, including housing, help for addiction issues and mental health.

Prisoner leaves with jail on her CV

“I had a job, I ain’t got a job now,” said Tilat Ajmal.

Before she went to prison, Ajmal worked for the NHS as a cleaner for 18 years.

As we filmed, she was leaving jail after serving less than three months for smuggling an item into prison while visiting someone. It was her first offence.

Her bags were packed, and in them was a CV she’d prepared. But she didn’t seem hopeful.

“I think it’s a bit bad having a conviction, I’ve been working all my life,” she said.

“As soon as coming out of them gates, I think you just have hundreds and thousands of things going through your head.”

‘Just enough time to rip their lives apart’

After we filmed at the prison, Sky News joined a support session at a women’s centre in Nottingham. It offers mandatory services to people serving sentences in the community, and also those on probation or licence periods.

I asked a case worker to explain why certain women offenders should be considered unique in the criminal justice system.

“I think what happens when a man goes to prison is that there is usually a woman holding everything together,” said Rachel Strong.

“He will be released from prison, his home will still be there, his family. He may have lost his job but there will be someone there. He will come out to his support network in place.

“That woman is that support network – so when she goes to prison, there’s nobody holding that together. People will lose their homes, sometimes their children are taken into care.

“Usually when women are sent to prison it’s for short sentences. Not enough time for anything productive, just enough time to rip their lives apart.”

‘It’s like rehab’

“I don’t mind prison, it’s like rehab,” said Donna Pritchards, who has been to HMP Foston Hall three times.

“I know you get clean when you’re here, and I needed it.”

Drugs are ‘main issue’ in prison

Others told us it was “easy” to get hold of drugs inside jail, with one prisoner describing some leading a “life of luxury”, with jail being like a “holiday camp”.

Amanda Brewer, drug strategy lead, told us: “Illicit drugs are our main issue day to day in everything that we do.

“They’re the main drivers for violence, they can cause self-harm issues, they cause vulnerability.”

Prisoners are also “trading” prescription drugs between one another.

‘Prison is not a nice place to be’

As the government explores greater use of alternatives to custody and scrapping certain short prison sentences, I asked the prisons minister whether criminals might see their approach as a “soft touch”.

“Prison is not a nice place to be,” said Lord Timpson, “but they need to turn their lives around there.”

The government commissioned the sentencing review alongside the creation of the Women’s Justice Board because they have an overcrowding crisis across the prison estate. But they also fundamentally believe prison isn’t the best form of punishment for certain types of offenders.

Women offenders in England and Wales are likely to be disproportionately impacted by the recommendations made in the review.

That’s because we expect it to suggest the scrapping of certain short sentences. In 2022, the Prison Reform Trust found over half (58%) of terms given to women were for less than six months.

Women are also considered by ministers to be a “vulnerable” group, with prison having a knock-on impact on their lives and potential for reoffending. Many report being a victim of crimes like domestic abuse, and 55% of female prisoners are mothers.

After two days of rare and unique access to different parts of the criminal justice system, it’s clear many feel prison isn’t working for female offenders. But what exactly a greater use of alternatives to custody looks like will take some time to figure out.

Contingencies in place 

Competitive prices?

Other advantages

When Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, it blamed Shein and Temu’s use of the de minimis exemption, which it said “undercut” its business. 

But experts say that exclusively attributing the success of Shein and Temu to that trade loophole misses many of the other factors that have made them smash hits in the U.S.

According to Anand Kumar, associate director of research at Coresight Research, Temu and Shein owe a lot of their success to their very agile supply chains that adapt fast to consumer trends. 

For example, Shein’s small-batch production — in which product styles are initially launched in limited quantities, typically around 100-200 items — allows it to test and scale products efficiently.