Gabriel Kou Solomon landed safely in Minneapolis-St. Paul airport today and was greeted by his host family and colleagues from the Save Yar Campaign. He’s looking pretty underfed but debonair even in clothes he’s been wearing for three days.

Kou had his first Subway sandwich in four months (his old standby meal — no, we are not fishing for a commercial endorsement deal) and will relax for a couple of days before we get cracking on planning for the July 28 congressional briefing.

Kou phoned and e-mailed us Friday to let us know that he has completed the first leg of his journey back. He flew from Juba, Sudan, to Kampala, Uganda, where he will unwind for a couple of days before leaving Tuesday to fly back home to Minneapolis/St. Paul.

His return flight is due to land at MSP early Wednesday afternoon. We hope to assemble a group to greet him. His research and advocacy in Juba since March have provided crucial contacts and information for this campaign against child abduction. His networking has kept this issue on the Government of South Sudan’s agenda. Kou is feeling good about his work, although it has been a strain at many times to work under the difficult conditions in a country that has barely begun to recover from its long civil war.

The timing of Kou’s return will give us time to plan before he joins in heading to D.C. for the 1 p.m. July 28 congressional briefing sponsored by U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn.

–DB

Gabriel Kou Solomon feels his work in South Sudan has just begun. But our congressional briefing on July 28 will be an important chance to raise the alarm about intertribal child abduction centered in Jonglei state. So we asked Kou to come back to co-present at the briefing and tell his family’s powerful story. He agreed, and he’s due to fly from Sudan to Uganda late this week and then back to the U.S. next week.

-D. Bernard

Our members Tracy Baumgardt and Madeline Thaden have just returned from a highly productive week of meetings with officials in Congress and the administration.

We’re very happy to relate that, with the crucial support and facilitation of the office of Congresswoman Betty McCollum, Tracy and Madeline arranged for us to hold an official congressional briefing in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., Room HC-6, at 1-3 p.m. July 28.

This will allow us an extended audience with top aides and other influential officials from government and nonprofits when we can describe the problem of uncontrolled child abduction in southeast Sudan. More to the point, we will ask attendees to use their influence to get the U.S. government to urgently lend assistance to this largely overlooked problem

We need your help.

Contact Congress: We want the U.S. to support a peace process for the Dinka and Murle communities caught up in this abduction nightmare. The Dinka are also seeing rising tension with the Nuer tribe, so that conflict should be addressed at the same time.
That is an urgent need, but it’s short-term. We also want the U.S. to provide aid to deal in the long term with the poverty and health problems that set up the conflict.
Please contact the offices of your U.S. House member and U.S. Senators and ask them to support U.S. aid to address the problem of child abduction centered on Jonglei state in South Sudan. U.S. residents can find contact information for their U.S. Representative on this page and for their U.S. Senators on this page. Direct them to www.save-yar.org for more information.

Contact South Sudan: The South Sudan government has indicated its willingness to pay attention to this problem, but the country’s many problems can distract them. It would help our effort if you would contact the Government of South Sudan Mission in Washington, D.C. via their web page and ask them to support peaceful reconciliation and development in Jonglei state.

Contribute: The Human Rights Program of the University of Minnesota has financially supported Gabriel Kou Solomon’s work in Juba, South Sudan, since March, but the budget has been expended. We also must raise funds to travel to D.C. for the July 28 briefing. If you are in a position to contribute to this work, please visit our donation page.

The Save Yar Campaign and its new umbrella organization Child Protection International are grateful for the warm welcome from Sudan experts in USAID and the State Department; the offices of Reps. Thomas Payne and Frank Wolf and the Minnesota and Wisconsin congressional delegations; and NGOs Save the Children USA, PACT, and the International Crisis Group.

–Daniel Lynx Bernard

We are deeply grateful to the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association and the talented writer John Allen for the very prominent coverage they are lending to Gabriel Kou Solomon and this campaign in the brand-new edition of their magazine, On Wisconsin.

The article by Allen, the magazine’s senior editor, is the most comprehensive telling of that story, and it reaches out to Kou’s fellow graduates of an institution of which he is proud to be affiliated. The campaign is based in the University of Minnesota Human Rights Program, but Kou and Program Director Barb Frey are both graduates of UW Madison, as are many supporters of the campaign.

The cover story appears at a time when campaign members are meeting with aides to Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. (for whom Kou once interned), and other Wisconsin and Minnesota representatives in Congress to begin seeking special aid for the Jonglei area of South Sudan — the epicenter of the wave of child abductions that swept up Kou’s nieces. The article is a real morale-booster when Kou is exerting great effort to continue his research on the ground in Juba, South Sudan, in the face of difficulties with communications, security and expenses.

For readers of the magazine who are visiting this web site for the first time, welcome and thanks for your interest. We hope you will use the links at right to sign up for updates or join our Facebook group. And: Go Badgers!

Now that we have a better understanding of the problems that surround the crisis of systemic child abduction in southeast Sudan, we are forming a more specific request to Congress on how it can help.

Two of our members, Madeline Thaden and Tracy Baumgardt, flew to Washington, D.C. today and will remain through Saturday to lay the groundwork for a successful request.

Already we can thank Congresswoman Betty McCollum and her staff for supporting the idea of holding a congressional briefing in late July that would give us a chance to explain the crisis to an audience of influential congressional officials. We are also receiving great advice and support from the offices of Senators Russ Feingold, Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar (pictured at left) and Representatives Keith Ellison and Tammy Baldwin.

Wish them luck, and seeing as Madeline stepped off a transatlantic flight just about 12 hours before she turned around and headed off to D.C., wish them strength!

It is with profound sadness that we pass along the news that the father of Yar and Ajak Achiek Mading, Mr. Achiek Mading Biar, has been killed in a robbery on the road in Jonglei state, South Sudan.

The tragedy appears unrelated to the tribal conflict at the heart of the pattern of child abduction with which the Save Yar Campaign is concerned. However it is another painful sign of how the slow pace of Sudan’s recovery puts deadly risks in the path of every average Sudanese person.

On a personal level, it is a devastating blow for Kou Solomon’s sister, Amer Ayuen Kou, to lose her two daughters to abduction and then lose their father, her husband, to random violence; and it is devastating for our friend Kou Solomon, who was bonded to Achiek by their mutual determination to keep working to find Yar and Ajak. We are inexpressibly saddened for the family, including Kou’s brothers in Juba and Australia who have helped us in this campaign.

We are not giving up, and neither is Kou.

Achiek’s death occurred on May 13 between 6 and 7 p.m. local time in an outlying area of Jonglei state. Kou received word on May 15 and later learned details of the incident which he shared with us May 19. All of the information below is from Kou’s brother David Dut, who heard it directly from a companion of Achiek’s who escaped the attack.

Achiek was fatally shot by a band of armed robbers while driving his car toward a northern village. Another man was paying Achiek to transport goods in the car; that man was also fatally shot by the robbers, who took the goods and left the car.

Achiek and his employer had driven out of Panyagor in Bor County (the county where Kou’s family lives and from which Yar and Ajak were abducted) and were heading north toward the village of Poktap in Duk County. The gunmen had staged similar attacks on two vehicles that had earlier traversed the same road, killing a person in one of those vehicles.

The eyewitness said he escaped death by hiding in the bushes until the gunmen left. He flagged down a later car for help, brought the bodies to Poktap to burial, then returned Achiek’s car to the family. David Dut concluded, “Let God almighty rest his soul.”

Kou was obviously very upset. But after a day he was sure he would be staying in South Sudan and continuing the work of researching the root causes of child abduction and forming a transnational advocacy network against it. “I will continue to do my work … here on the ground,” he wrote in email to the campaign. “I can['t] leave until something is done,” Kou wrote.

The Save Yar Campaign thanks its longtime coalition member the UN Student Association of the University of Minnesota (UNSA) for hosting a successful benefit May 2. Guests helped cover the cost of sending two of our members back to Washington, D.C., in June to ask federal officials for specific help for the problems surrounding child abduction in South Sudan.

The guests also enjoyed good food, an exclusive photo exhibit of the campaign’s visit to Juba over Spring Break (see right), and presentations by Kait, Robyn, and Human Rights Program Director Barb Frey.

Kou is still in South Sudan, where he has been invited to take part in meetings aimed at intertribal reconciliation, a key element of addressing the root causes of child abduction. We are thrilled that Kou has the opportunity to participate in this rare and important conversation.

Thanks again to UNSA: Nick Hagman, Brian Meskimen, Aisha Patel, Madeline Thaden, Simone Bak, Kait Dougherty, and members.

Gabriel Kou Solomon has had a productive month in Juba. He has met with officials at every level of the South Sudan government. As he gathers information, he has made progress in sorting out the interlocking economic and social problems that form the context of child abduction. And more to the point, through his work as a positive ambassador, he reminds those officials that the rest of the world is counting on them to protect their most vulnerable residents – and that we are ready to help.

Of particular note, on April 1 Kou had an hourlong meeting with Kuol Manyang Juuk, the governor of Jonglei state, the epicenter of the wave of child abductions. South Sudan President Salva Kiir had, in an interview with WCCO-AM’s Jack Rice, emphasized low fertility rates in one tribe as driving some of its members to abduct children. However, Governor Kuol downplayed the importance of infertility. He said an improved water supply would increase cattle herds, thus reducing the incentive for cattle raiding, which is often accompanied by child abduction. He also emphasized the need for paved roads so that authorities can pursue abducors.

On a heartening note, the Governor told Kou that he would, “personally supervise and organize peace and reconciliation between Dinka, Nuer, Murle and other state ethnic groups.” The Governor said that such an intertribal reconciliation effort is being prepared with support from the NGO Pact Sudan. Governor Kuol invited Kou to participate in the reconciliation process.

Kou followed up on plans for this “Ethnic Peace Conference” by meeting on April 11with John Batale, South Sudan Director for Child Welfare. Batale is trying to gather the chiefs of the Bor Dinka and Murle communities for a “workshop.” Batale recently traveled to Jonglei state to discuss child protection/abduction issues with the state-level Ministry of Gender, Social Welfare and Religious Affairs.

Batale told Kou he was disappointed in the government’s slow reaction to child abduction to date. Batale is pressing the South Sudan Parliament to form a commission to pass (much-delayed) legislative proposals on child protection and child abduction. At the least, passage of those bills would provide a symbolic platform. But Batale perceives a low level of interest among Members of Parliament.

Also heartening, Batale told Kou that he had raised the case of Yar and Ajak in large meeting of NGO officials. Kou raised Yar and Ajak’s case with the Undersecretary for the Ministry Internal Affairs, Lt. Gen. Peter Athieu, and the Undersecretary for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, George Garang Deng.

Kou had a valuable meeting on April 10 with Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior, Presidential Adviser on Gender and Human Rights. De Mabior has a panoramic understanding of the economic and social problems and how they could be improved. She said the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) should build medical facilities in Jonglei’s Pibor County to help the community with fertility and disease control; provide aid for veterinary care for cattle; and train Murle people in digging boreholes for drinking water. De Mabior also saw a need for the GOSS to run a community-based educational program emphasizing the injustice of child abduction, along with general education for women and children.

However, De Mabior said current insecurity in Pibor is an obstacle to any such interventions. Only soldiers can enter Pibor County; aid workers will not. South Sudan needs cops: De Mabior said that under the current system, each county, no matter how large, is allocated only 90 police officers.

Kou’s research is still broad-based, but he is beginning to zoom in on a few issues including intertribal reconciliation. Kou is at the top of his game as a thinker, researcher and advocate. He thanks all his supporters back here whom he knows are rooting for him.

This cause is getting support and attention as several of its leading organizers are being honored with awards.

Dr. Barbara A. Frey, who singlehandedly enabled the campaign to thrive by adopting it into the Human Rights Program which she directs for the University of Minnesota, has been selected to the University’s highly prestigious Outstanding Community Service Award.

Campaign Chair Robyn Skrebes and Vice Chair Amelia Corl each have been awarded an Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellowship thanks to the support of Al and Ingrid Lenz and the Otto Bremer Foundation. Coordinator Daniel Lynx Bernard has been selected for the Mary A. McEvoy Award for Public Engagement and Leadership.

On April 22, Dr. Frey was given the Outstanding Community Service Faculty Award, the University’s highest recognition for public engagement or community service. It is awarded to members of the University community who have made significant, demonstrable contributions to society’s well-being” by “devoting their time, talents, and expertise to serve the public good.” This award recognizes not only Dr. Frey’s stewardship of the Save Yar Campaign/Yar’s Campaign to End Child Abduction, but also her leadership of a project to stop the desecration of Hmong burial sites in Thailand, for her work in the local arts community, and her many other contributions to community service. The Office of Public Engagement’s notification to Dr. Frey said: “Your work serves as a model for ways in which faculty members fulfill the University’s public-service, land-grant mission.”

Ameila and Robyn’s fellowships are through the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center.

Amelia’s fellowship will fund her work this summer with the Center for Victims of Torture on its anti-torture public policy campaign, developing materials for media and grassroots use. “The campaign aims to expand the United States’ growing anti-torture movement and mobilize the political will necessary to change U.S. policy” Amelia said.

Robyn’s fellowship will allow her to continue her work with Yar’s Campaign to End Child Abduction during a crucial stage in its maturation. “This summer, my goal will be to take Yar’s Campaign into the coming year,” Robyn said. “I will be particularly focused on developing the image of the campaign, building relationships with key actors, and seeking funds to grow the organization beyond the summer. I am very excited and thankful to have the opportunity continue my work with Yar’s Campaign to End Child Abduction. “

Robyn was also honorably mentioned for the Council of Graduate Students 2008 Leadership Award for her work on the Campaign.

Dan’s award is through the University of Minnesota Office of the President and is named in memory of the late professor of educational pscyhology, Mary McEvoy. The award is given annually to graduate and professional students who display leadership and public engagement above and beyond normal duties.