There is a saying that my mother, my reservoir of strength, always used: “When two elephants fight, the grass underneath suffers the most.” This has certainly been the case in Sudan, a nation that experienced peace for about a decade since its independence from British-Egyptian colonialism on January 1st, 1956.

The latest war from 1983 to 2005 between North and South Sudan destroyed the lives of many people, especially Southern Sudanese against whom jihad (holy war) had been declared. More than 2 million have perished, more than 4 million have been displaced, and thousands are missing in action. I have lost brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and precious friends in what is now the longest civil unrest in history.

Currently, the Janjaweed militias backed by the government of Sudan are mercilessly killing the people of Darfur, which has become the “silent genocide” of the twenty-first century.  Since 2003, over 400.000 people have been killed and 2.2 million displaced. On October 2004, my baby sister, a medical student at Bahr El-Ghazal University, was lit on fire near our house in Khartoum. Although she survived the gasoline/kerosene fire, she is still living with the physical pain, deformity, and paralyzing fear of being attacked again by those who hate her because of her ethnic and religious background.

Presently the people in Darfur-Western Sudan live in constant fear of planes dropping bombs, being caught in crossfire, or even worse —women being raped and enslaved. Our children in Southern Sudan and Darfur are suffering the most. They, along with their mothers, have been victims of crossfire, land mines, rape, slavery, and human-created famine.

My personal experiences of persecution and living in a war-torn environment put me in close contact with the needs and challenges of people around the world facing various injustices. As long as the violence, persecution and discrimination continues in Sudan and beyond, I will continue to fight for social justice and human rights amongst the most marginalized and too often forgotten in our world.