To escape death, the citizens of war-torn countries are forced to flee their homeland. They leave their country by whatever means necessary. Once they cross the boundaries of their native land, they become refugees. People of many different nationalities have had their country in front of the word. There have been Cuban refugees, Haitian refugees, East German refugees, Albanian refugees, the list unfortunately goes on and on.
According to a February 19th article in The New York Times, " 35 million people worldwide are fleeing war or persecution. The last time the number was this high, .
World War II was raging" (A18). An estimated 4.5 million of these unfortunate souls originate from the African country of Sudan ("Oil in Sudan - Deteriorating Human Rights"). .
The true magnitude of the plight of the Sudanese refugee will never fully translate to ink and paper. That being said; in the following I will attempt to provide a better understanding of the situation through a brief history of the civil war, causes for the conflict, including the involvement of the oil industry, examples of the refugees" hardships, and a summary of what is happening today with Sudanese refugees.
Sudan has been embroiled in a seemingly endless civil war virtually since its" beginnings as a country in 1956 ("Sudan"). The conflict has, both literally and figuratively, split the country in half, spilling an unfathomable amount of blood along the way. An estimated 2 million lives have been lost (Hassan, Abdalla). The plight of the Sudanese, especially those of the southern or non-Islamic faction, is truly an atrocity of such mythic proportions that only the Holocaust of WWII can compare with it. These people have lived through the systematic slaughtering and starving of their brethren. .
The full history behind the split-up of Sudan into two warring sides is an extremely complicated web of events worthy of an encyclopedia all its" own.