Text Machteld van Kempen
WUR is incredibly diverse, with hundreds of internationals working and studying here. In the Meanwhile In column, we ask one of them to comment on events in their home country. Master’s student of the Governance of Sustainability Transformations Omnia Elgunaid Hassan Mustafa (22) shares her thoughts about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan.
‘Sudan is experiencing the biggest humanitarian crisis on Earth right now with over 15 million displaced people. There’s also a famine, the worst in 40 years. The media often uses the term “the forgotten war” when talking about Sudan. But what they mean by “forgotten”? We, the people who are experiencing it, are not forgetting anything. The world is choosing to forget. Other countries evade accountability and keep on labelling it a civil war and an internal conflict, even though it has become a proxy war with many countries involved. It’s actually a very lazy way of reporting that relies on dehumanizing language.
‘It’s hard being here because it feels like you don’t have a backbone anymore, there is no home country to return to. It’s one of my biggest fears, because what if something bad happens here — where am I going to go? There’s a lot of survival guilt following what has been happening in Sudan from here and I find it hard to keep up with the news. So there’s also the guilt of not caring enough about it.
‘If there was no conflict back home, my experience here would be very different. In a way I wish I could have come here with no worries, no traumas, be normal like other people and go back to my country for the holidays. But at the same time, I’m also kind of appreciative of the challenges that I had to face and come out of.
‘Living here, I long for a community of others who understand conflict first-hand. As a victim of something so drastic, when I talk about it with normal people, it’s like they almost cannot comprehend it. People always shy away from talking to you about it and they don’t know what to say.
‘I also wish people would see Africans as worthy of saving as much as everybody else. And I wish that people would stop treating our lives as disposable, as if it’s just another conflict in Africa. As if this Africa is not a real place with real people who are just like you, with dreams, aspirations, families and loved ones.’
