The Washington Post described it as “a stunning image”. Hala al-Karib, a Sudanese women’s rights activist with the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, told the newspaper that the photo sums up “this moment we have been waiting for for the past 30 years”.

Karih speculated that Salah may have been inspired by celebrated heroines from Sudanese history, such as the poet and warrior Mihera bint Abboud, who led men in a fight against a Turkish-Egyptian invasion in the early 19th century.

The Sydney Morning Herald compared the photo to the Statue of Liberty, while the New York Times’ fashion director and chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman described it as a photo “that so viscerally frames the human story in a time of social or political paroxysm that it becomes a symbol”.

Understanding the debate around that viral photo of a woman protesting in Sudan