Sudan's Forgotten Tragedy
Hon. Tony Hall
July 1, 1998
Democratic Congressman Tony P. Hall, of Dayton, Ohio, has been an outspoken advocate for combating world hunger, protecting human rights, and promoting humanitarian causes including basic education, adult literacy, immunization, and sustainable agriculture in developing countries. The founder of the Congressional Hunger Center, Hall served as Chairman of the House Select Committee on Hunger from 1989 until it was abolished in 1993, after which he fasted for 22 days to draw worldwide attention to the scourge of hunger. He traveled to Sudan in late May 1998.
A low hum on the horizon grabs the attention of hundreds of starving Sudanese as they turn their heads to the sky, some fearing another high altitude bombing by government forces. As a large propeller plane comes into view, men, women, and children who lack the strength to wipe flies from their face spring to life as they run to gather bags of food falling from the sky. Nowhere in the world do humanitarian airdrops look more like manna from heaven than in Sudan, where 15 years of brutal civil war have ravaged a nation.
The war in Sudan has spawned the world's largest population of internally displaced people—an estimated 4 million of Sudan's total population of 29 million—and has laid waste to the vast human and economic potential of Africa's largest country. The massive human toll in Africa's longest-running war includes nearly 2 million civilians killed by violence, starvation, and disease. Gross violations of human rights are also pervasive. Women and children of southern Sudan are sold as concubines and servants in crude slave markets. And children, particularly orphans, are conscripted as soldiers, forced to kill or be killed. Some 700,000 Sudanese now face devastating ...
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