War child is a story of a child who went to war, not a child born with the war within him. Emmanuel Jal was seven years old when he leapt at the opportunity to go to school in Ethiopia; after losing his mother, being sent to war by his father, surviving a boat capsize in the River Nile and march across the Sahara desert, Emmanuel finally begins the education he has watched his comrades die seeking. He could have written a terrifyingly dramatic book based on these events alone, but instead Emmanuel Jal chose to tell us his whole story, of which this was only the beginning.

If you’ve read Lance Armstrong’s autobiography, you’ll know just how one individual’s battle for survival can convince you that the mind is capable of overcoming absolutely anything. Emmanuel Jal spends his childhood and adolescent years growing up in the refugee camps of Ethiopia,  a military prison, the bush, the desert and the slums of Nairobi believing that if he just keeps on trooping and ‘taking every opportunity that came may way’  he will eventually be in the position to take revenge on Jallabas, his ‘Arab enemy’.  He is a bright kid, learning that by making his seniors laugh he can gain favours and that by obeying commands he can forget his past, his home, his family and fight for a future.

The irony of this attitude is that it is not until he meets Emma McClune, a British aid worker who plays life by morals, not rules, that he learns the only way to achieve anything for his home country is to re-learn how to love and to forgive and to lay down his gun forever.  From dreams of flying a Nyanking, the aeroplane whose name meant ‘daughter of the king’, on behalf of Sudan in the war between North and South, he begins to dream of a peaceful land, in which families, torn apart by the war, meet once more, and in which every child is blessed by his ‘guardian angel’ Emma McClune with the chance to go to school.

What is so amazing about this book is that we do not need to finish it to know that his dream came true; that is to say, his dream was real and what he envisioned is today part of the reality. This is not just an autobiography; it is a socio-political account of the situation in South Sudan over the past thirty-two years; an illustration of the psychology of the human mind; a story of rags to riches; and testimony to the saying that ‘if you can believe it, the mind can achieve it’.

It would go against the faith in which this book was written to recommend it for anybody in particular, because this it is a book about life in all its completeness and anybody who reads it with an open heart will learn to love Jal, to love everyone and everything that he meets and to believe in the magic of life.

Part 2 : This month the Israeli government began a new program insentivizing South Sudanese refugees to return back to South Sudan or face deportation at the end of March. This decision came at the heels of a diplomatic visit by the newly-formed government of South Sudan, made of the rebel groups whose fight for freedom Israel has long supported by being one of the only nations to sell them weapons. Refusing to investigate individual asylum seekers’ claims for refugee status, Israel claims it does not owe them the protections enshrined in the 1951 Convention on the Rights of Refugees. The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky speaks with homeless refugees in the park where most live once they’re released from detention, to Ran Cohen, the Director of Physicians for Human Rights, and Nic Schlagman, the Humanitarian Coordinator of the African Refugee Development Center.

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Here is Part 1 of the story: Israel to become biggest jailer of refugees: On January 11th the Israeli parliament passed an amendment to the so- called “Infiltrators Law”. This revision allows the authorities to automatically imprison asylum seekers for three years. The plan includes constructing a 10,000 person jail to house the refugees. According to Amnesty International, this puts Israel at the top of the Western World for length of imprisonment of refugees. Today Israel is home to nearly 50,000 asylum seekers from Africa, 85% of whom are from Eritrea and Sudan. The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky spoke to Nic Schlagman and Johannes Bayu of the African Refugee Development Center, Ran Cohen of Physicians for Human Rights, and “Ibrahim”, an Eritrean asylum seeker in Israel for ten years.

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Lia Tarachansky is a Middle East correspondent for The Real News Network. She’s been based with TRNN in Toronto, Washington D.C., and Israel/Palestine. Lia works on two series, ‘Israel and International Law’ and ‘Who benefits from the Israeli occupation?’. She is currently filming her first documentary, Seven Deadly Myths (Israel/Palestine/Canada)

As I follow events in Southern Sudan and add articles to my headlines timeline, people continually ask me basic questions about Sudan. Below I’ve included a few videos that have recently been posted online. They should provide a descent background for those wanting to learn more as Southern Sudanese are set to what is generally believed to choose to create Africa’s newest independent country.

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Sudan: History of a Broken Land

As the people of southern Sudan prepare to vote in a referendum that may see them secede from the North, Al Jazeera maps the turbulent history of a country on the verge of a momentous decision.

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Crossroads Sudan: Sudan’s path to development

Al Jazeera looks at the economic challenges Sudan will be facing after a possible secession of the South.

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Sudan Referendum

On Sunday, Southern Sudan will begin a week-long referendum on whether to break off from Sudan and form a new independent state. The vote is being held under the 2005 peace agreement that ended a nearly four-decade civil war between the North and South that killed some 2.5 million Sudanese. The people of South Sudan are widely expected to approve secession, and the vote has stoked fears of renewed violence in Africa’s largest nation. by Democracy Now

To be eligible to participate in the January 9, 2011 referendum, voters must meet one of three criteria as established by the SSRC: 1) Voter who belongs to one of the indigenous ethnic communities residing in the Southern Sudan (on or before January 1956; 2) Voter who traces his/her ancestry to one of the indigenous ethnic communities in Southern Sudan, but has not permanently resided in the south (without interruption) before or since Jan 1956; and 3) voter who does not belong to one of the indigenous ethnic communities in the Southern Sudan, but he/she or his/her parents or grand-parents are permanently residing in the South (without interruption) since 1st January 1956.

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Below are two video interviews by Ariic Reng, Canadian Outreach Assistant with the International Organization for Migration:

Interview with Dr. Mom Kou Nhial Arou, Assistant Secretary General, Southern Sudan Referendum Commission

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Interview with Gatdeet Wakou, Canadian Representative, Southern Sudan Referendum Commission