Project

South Sudan: Rebuilding Hope

Gabriel Deng, Koor Garang and Garang Mayuol, Southern Sudanese "Lost Boys" in the U.S., were forced to flee Sudan as children when their villages were attacked in 1987, finding safety for a time in a refugee camp in Ethiopia until needing to flee once more, this time to Kakuma camp in Kenya. Since leaving Sudan, they have scarcely been able to obtain news about their villages or families.

In May 2007, accompanied by filmmaker Jen Marlowe and journalist David Morse, Gabriel, Koor and Garang will return to Sudan to discover the fate of their homes and families. Gabriel will take the first steps toward starting a school in his village, and Koor will bring medical supplies to and volunteer at a clinic in his. They will also return to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya.

Along the way, David and Jen will invite the thoughts and analyses of the people of South Sudan, two and a half years after the signing of the fragile Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Their reporting explores the connections between the conflict in South Sudan and in other parts of Sudan, including Darfur, probing the larger questions of identity and ethnicity. Through video and written pieces, they will attempt to gauge the current state of South Sudan — taking a pulse on the Southern Sudanese people's hopes and fears for the future.

January 15, 2010 | Pulitzer Center

Video: Education and Health Care in South Sudan

Jen Marlowe, for the Pulitzer Center

As Gabriel Bol says in Rebuilding Hope, "Peace means development, peace means people go to school, peace means when you are sick you get treatment. Health and education go hand in hand, they are not really separate things."

Health care and education were among the two most vital needs in South Sudan, according to almost everyone that we spoke to, from villagers to Southern Sudanese government officials.

January 08, 2010 | Pulitzer Center

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and its aftermath

Jen Marlowe, for the Pulitzer Center

Tomorrow is the five-year anniversary of the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, ending the longest-running civil war in Africa, a conflict that killed two million people and displaced four million other. Most of the commentary we hear about the peace agreement comes from Western analysts, people who have been studying and/or working in the Sudan for years. I believe it is also vital to hear the voices of those for whom peace and war in Sudan has the greatest impact—Southern Sudanese themselves.

January 07, 2010 | Pulitzer Center

Video: Rebuilding Hope - Follow Up 2009

Jen Marlowe, for the Pulitzer Center

In June, 2007, I accompanied Gabriel Bol Deng, Garang Mayuol and Koor Garang on their first trip back home to South Sudan after having fled brutal civil war twenty years earlier, as small children. They had been living in the U.S. since 2001, part of a group known as "The Lost Boys of Sudan." In addition to searching for their families and villages, there were several questions they were investigating: had the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed on January 9, 2005, led to greater peace and stability? Or was South Sudan on a slow slide back towards civil war?

November 01, 2007 | Project news

South Sudan crisis ignored in midst of Darfur attention

By Allie Feras. American University's The Eagle

An amplified focus on the genocide in Darfur has drawn international attention away from tragedies occurring in south Sudan, filmmaker Jen Marlowe said at a panel discussion Tuesday evening.

"The peace process that was started [in South Sudan] ... has been allowed to slide back into what looks like a slide back into civil war," Marlowe said.