Editor's Note: This article by John Prendergast, Founding Director of the Enough Project, was originally posted in The Daily Beast
The Good Lie should be about the past. Unfortunately, a new war, rooted in the embers of the one that brought the Lost Boys and Girls to America, has engulfed South Sudan today.
Opening this coming weekend is the hard-hitting new film The Good Lie, a fictionalized version of the extraordinary story of South Sudan’s Lost Boys and Girls who overcame devastating tragedies and ended up as refugees in the United States. The Good Lie should have been a slice of history, the likes of which never to be repeated. But the reality is that a new war, rooted in the embers of the one that brought the Lost Boys and Girls to the United States, has engulfed South Sudan today. A whole new generation of lost children is in the making, an outcome which still can be prevented if the current war can be brought to a quick conclusion.
The Good Lie was filmed at a time of tremendous promise for South Sudan. After a decades-long liberation struggle that left millions dead and displaced, South Sudan became in 2011 the newest country in the world and its people began the herculean task of building a nation from scratch. What was less visible to outsiders, though, were the termites that were eating away at the foundation of this new state.
Continue reading the full op-ed on The Daily Beast