Several legal reforms have been passed by the Sovereign Council of Sudan, including the banning of female genital mutilation, removal of an apostasy law which punished abandonment of Islam with death by stoning, banning public flogging, and an amendment to article 148 of the Penal Code, which banned same-sex relations and prescribed the death sentence.
Following the reforms, same-sex relations remain criminalised and punishable by imprisonment of up to seven years, but application of the death penalty and flogging have been removed.Sudan was one of a handful of countries which explicitly prescribed the death penalty for same-sex relations, the others being Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen.