Watching the scenes out of New Orleans, if you turn down the sound it could be the Sudan or any Third World country. But it's not. it's the United States of America.
Al Roker
Having arrived in London to seek refuge during the civil war in Sudan, where I was born, the thing I'm most proud of is having totally evolved. I came here not knowing how to speak English, but I went to school and learned; I adapted to this new culture.
Alek Wek
It's a small world when you're from South Sudan.
When I was 10 years old, I fled my homeland amid the bomb blasts of civil war in Sudan.
Going back to South Sudan after the independence took place was deeply emotional for me because I had gone through the civil war with my family just before going to seek refuge in London.
I never thought I would see a free South Sudan.
I grew up in southern Sudan, one of nine children. Our life was simple but very happy.
I grew up in a small town in Sudan. There weren't many cars, so we did things in the countryside near where we lived.
My life was filled with family in South Sudan. I am the seventh of nine children, and we grew up in what would be considered a middle-class family. We did not have a lot, but we did have more than a lot of other people.
When I was a girl, civil war in Sudan forced me to flee my home town of Wau.
Leaving southern Sudan as a child was terrifying. It was 1985, and my family and I were trying to escape to Khartoum, the capital in the North, to safety.
South Sudanese people are rich like the soil; they just need a little water, and they will grow.
The serious crimes by the Sudanese government and the government-supported militias must be met with serious consequences. We must work for tough international economic sanctions on the Sudanese government.
Allyson Schwartz
The governments of south Sudan must make sure that everybody will get a nationality - that nobody will become stateless because of this separation.
Antonio Guterres
People in Ethiopia, the Sudan, etc., don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognize the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF, their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump 'UNICEF.'
Audrey Hepburn
The government of Sudan, employing a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.
Barton Gellman
Sudan expelled bin Laden on May 18, 1996, to Afghanistan.
The whole world is set up so that for places like Switzerland to exist, that are crime-free and with the best care for everybody, you have to have places like Sudan, or Jamaica. But really, there's enough to share, when you check it. It's not that complicated, really. It's probably less thinking and more feeling that's required.
Damian Marley
I'm not the Eritrean welfare minister and not the Sudanese labor minister.
Eli Yishai
An effective U.S. policy toward Sudan - one capable of changing the situation in the south and affecting the lives of its people - will require top-level attention and a great deal of energy. It should have three elements: aid, diplomacy, and financial disclosure.
Elliott Abrams
The United States already has in place comprehensive trade sanctions against Sudan, imposed because of the regime's support for terrorism. While we maintain diplomatic relations, we do not staff our embassy there.
If the president of the United States says that attacks on civilians, starvation, and denial of religious freedom in Sudan are important international issues, they become so.
The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so that they can handle an increased flow of aid.
When you see a Sudanese walking on the street, there is a story.
When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer.
I don't know anywhere where the people are hungrier for education than South Sudan.
For many Sudanese, it's for strength they choose to be Christian rather than Muslim. My mum was a Muslim but she became a Christian later.
The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, 'Don't go back to war.' That's all they said. They didn't push anything else.
The wealthiest Sudanese don't know what war is. Their children are safe in school.
I grew up in Sudan and Kenya, and lived in both the rural and urban centers of both countries throughout my life.
Our leaders must hear us speaking on behalf of our brothers and sisters in South Sudan. If the moral duty to save lives and work toward peace is not compelling enough to drive decision-makers, we must remind them that we care and will hold them accountable.
While it's easy for South Sudan to feel distant, the situation is all too real for the South Sudanese mothers choosing which child gets to eat tomorrow. This is a time when we must look outward together and declare that humanity has no borders - no one deserves to suffer like this, especially in a world of such abundance.
I am just back from South Sudan, one of the world's most fragile nations. For years, I have been moved by the kind people who maintain hope that they will live to see peace. My heart has ached for them, as they have endured pain and violence that make such hope feel out of reach.
I mean, I can look back with great pleasure on what has happened in Sudan, and our commitment to people who are persecuted in that kind of way.
I was born into Sudan's civil war, and before I could read or write, I was using an AK47 in the conflict between the Muslim north and Animist/Christian south over the land and natural resources.
We want peace and development in all 10 states of South Sudan - we don't want military backing.
South Sudan is one of the most hard-put places in the world.
One of the biggest problems that Egypt faces is the lack of border security - the importation of weapons on their way to Gaza, for example, coming out of Sudan.
Muslim delegates concerned about rights in Palestine could have brought their enthusiasm closer to home by addressing the fate of black Christians being slaughtered and enslaved in the Sudan.
I spent about a year traveling overland from Egypt through Sudan and Ethiopia, and eventually into East Africa.
I do commercials, but I also go to Sudan as an ambassador for UNICEF.
We are also assisting the refugees who have fled across the border to Chad. As many of them have been subject to attacks by militia crossing from Sudan, UNHCR is mounting a major logistical operation to establish camps and transfer refugees away from the border zone.
Secondly, the Government of Sudan should commit to the disarmament and control of the Janjaweed militia and ensure that the targeting of civilians ceases immediately.
As a Jew I cannot sit idle while genocidal atrocities continue to unfold in Darfur, Sudan.
There are different opinions across the Middle East of Al-Jazeera. They've been kicked out of Egypt and Jordan and then let back in; they've been totally banned from Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria.
Already, China has undermined U.S. foreign policy in efforts to gain access to oil resources in Iran and Sudan. We simply cannot separate the political and economic values of oil.
The UN Commission on Human Rights, whose membership in recent years has included countries - such as Libya and Sudan - which have deplorable human rights records, and the recent Oil-for-Food scandal, are just a few examples of why reform is so imperative.
All South Sudanese deserve consistent and unimpeded humanitarian assistance, regardless of if they live in areas held by rebel or government forces.
European leaders cannot afford to be afraid. The refugee crisis is not one from which they can opt out. No magic wand will empower leaders to transport more than a million people back across the Aegean and the Bosphorus to Mosul and Aleppo, or across the Mediterranean to Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan.
Sudan is not Arab enough for Arabs and not African enough for Africans.
