The Lost Girls of Sudan Find a Voice

In 1998, Agnes Oswaha fled Sudan with nothing but her purse and her life.

She ended up in Seattle, Washington where she was granted asylum in 1999. But even today, ten years later, Oswaha has nightmares about the ongoing genocides in her home country. She has lost brothers, sisters, cousins angrandparents in Sudan. In October 2004, her little sister Esther, a medical student, was lit on fire near the family´s house in Khartoum. Although Esther survived, 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.

According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, more than 2 million Sudanese—one out of every five—have been killed and over four million displaced since 1983. The civil war rages between the predominantly northern Arab Muslim population and the southern region´s Christian population. Raised as a Christian in Khartoum, the predominantly Arab capital city, Oswaha faced severe discrimination. "For the first 20 years of my life, I lived as a southern Sudanese Christian minority in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. In Khartoum, Arab-Muslims are the majority and hold the positions of power. Growing up, I faced educational and social obstacles as a young Christian female in (...)