Oak Human Rights Fellow Ushari Mahmud teaches in Miller Library.

By Yvonne Siu '03

Halfway across the world and a cultural universe away, Kuj Akon tirelessly searches for his missing daughter. He doesn't know what she would look like today and describes her as she was 10 years ago, when she was abducted by slave raiders.

This is the image that Ushari Mahmud remembers at Colby when he reflects on his work improving human rights in Sudan and helping the Sudanese children who have been the victims of slavery, incarceration or child soldiering. "He makes a trip from south to north Sudan every year hoping to find his daughter," Mahmud said. "He never gives up."

Mahmud is the 2002 Oak Human Rights Fellow at Colby for the fall semester. For the past 15 years he has been protesting the effects of armed conflict on the Sudanese people, particularly children caught up in a bloody civil war that pits the Muslim north against the Christian south.

Toddlers are stolen from their families and sold into slavery. Thirteen-year olds are handed weapons and ordered to kill and mutilate their enemy. Slaves are often beaten. Moreover, these practices are used as war strategies by both sides; slavery is tolerated by the northern Khartoum government and child soldiering is adopted by the southern rebels.

Met with admiration by some and searing hostility by others, Mahmud has put his personal safety on the line to expose these ugly practices. His work documenting and revealing the reality of slavery in Sudan, now a controversial issue in the media, landed him in prison for two years.

Mahmud has found a safe haven at Colby this semester--a respite intended to give him a chance to relax and reflect. "I don't have time to relax, but I will do a lot of reflection," he said. As well as helping to organize the Oak Human Rights Lecture Series, he is teaching a course called Human Rights in a Global Perspective, giving presentations at high schools and writing manuscripts on issues such as child protection, human rights and language rights.

He said he is delighted by the atmosphere at Colby and especially by the receptivity of his students to his work. Mahmud found many students already involved in human rights work in the United States. "It's encouraging to know that," he said.

Mahmud developed his interest in human rights while studying sociolinguistics at Georgetown University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1979. He taught at Khartoum University for 10 years and has worked for the past six years with the United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Kenya and Burundi to protect children in Sudan.

It's a painstaking process, despite the broader ideals it UNICEF upholds. Mahmud educates rebels and government officials alike, emphasizing that slavery and child soldiering are considered violations of international law and human rights offenses. Through data gathering, documentation and persuasion, he seeks government approval to release incarcerated children and to help displaced populations. "The main challenge has been knowing how to deal with sensitive issues and handling exposure to danger by those who perpetrate the crimes I'm fighting against," Mahmud said.

Perhaps the most fulfilling achievement in his career was demobilizing 10,000 child soldiers in south Sudan in 2001. "It was a one-year project in which I was able to save one of the largest amounts of children I ever have."

Once demobilized, the children are reunited with their families, if possible. Mahmud's group also attempts to get children involved in a program designed to reintegrate them into society. Counseling and other services are offered to those children traumatized by their duties as soldiers, and Mahmud tries to get them to go to school.

After he leaves Colby, Mahmud will return to Burundi, where he has been accepted as the chief of the Child Protection division of UNICEF. He will continue to advocate for human rights and to help reunite families that have been torn apart because of the war.

And all the while he will remember Kuj Akon and his stolen daughter. "I met him years ago, and I've never forgotten about him," Mahmud said.