The Lost Girls of Sudan

Movies about the lost boys of Sudan... 2. Movies about the lost girls... 0.

In case anyone is interested in the girls' plights, [from the World Affairs Review, Rutgars University] "When asked in a written interview why women were so poorly represented within the large group of resettled Kakuma youth, Phillipps Baguoot (one of the 'Lost Boys,' who resettled in Duxbury, Massachusetts) gave two reasons for the difference: "First, in Sudan culture young women are not allowed to embark on journey without guardians. Second, most young women got married at very young age" (Baguoot). To explicate further, when their villages were under attack, the women and girls were captured by the advancing armies and were most likely sold into marriages or the sex/slave trade (Boule, 2004) Many of the young women and girls were without parents and siblings who could have supported them; therefore, when the young women entered into the camp, they "were absorbed into foster homes and left to a very uncertain fate," while the boys were able to remain a "reasonably identifiable group which finally caught the attention and sympathy of resettlement countries" (Nyabera, 8). After learning of the situations in Sudan and in Kakuma refugee camps, Western citizens were persuaded to take a stand by 'adopting' young refugees into their own society, because their socio-cultural ideas of childhood could not condone or approve the dismal conditions that these young refugees were forced to live in. The girls, however, were kept behind in Africa due to the socio-cultural norms of their society, which encouraged the creation of an environment that made the 'lost girls' "overlooked and forgotten" by the Western media (8).

Maybe one day someone might care enough to tell their story.