The label “Lost Boys (and Girls) of Sudan/South Sudan” is both descriptive and symbolic, emerging from a violent historical context and carrying deep emotional, cultural, and political meaning. The phrase refers to tens of thousands of children primarily from the Dinka and Nuer ethnic groups who were separated from or orphaned by the protracted civil conflicts in Sudan (principally the Second Sudanese Civil War, 1983–2005) and the later violence surrounding the creation of South Sudan (2011) and its internal conflicts. These children suffered forced displacement, long marches through dangerous terrain, separation from family and community structures, and years in refugee camps; many were resettled abroad. The term “Lost Boys” (and by extension “Lost Girls”) captures their literal loss of family and home as well as the symbolic loss of childhood and social belonging.
Origin and literal meaning of the term
The phrase “Lost Boys” was widely used by aid workers, journalists, and academics to describe groups of unaccompanied male children who trekked across Sudan and into Ethiopia and Kenya during waves of fighting in the 1980s and 1990s. It is commonly reported that the term was inspired in part by J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan the fictional “Lost Boys” who are children without parental supervision and who wander combined with the tragic reality that these Sudanese boys truly were lost to normal family life, orphaned, or separated and forced to fend for themselves. Humanitarian organizations and media adopted the phrase because it succinctly conveyed both the vulnerability and the anomalous social status of these children in refugee settings.
But the label is not only metaphorical. It also served as a practical categorization in humanitarian work: “Lost Boys” became shorthand for unaccompanied minors from southern Sudan who had made long journeys to the Kakuma (Kenya) and other refugee camps, often following routes that spanned hundreds or thousands of kilometres and that exposed them to hunger, disease, wild animals, and armed attacks. Aid agencies used the term to identify groups requiring special protection, assistance, and—later—resettlement processing.
Historical context: war, displacement, and orphaning
To understand why children became “lost,” one must consider the intensity and scale of the violence. The Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005) was a brutal, decades-long conflict pitting the central Sudanese government against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and causing massive civilian displacement and fatalities. Whole villages were razed, and many civilians—especially children—were killed or forced to flee. In many cases families were separated during attacks; sometimes adults were killed outright while children escaped, sometimes children became separated during chaotic escapes. The result was a large population of unaccompanied minors. Estimates vary, but tens of thousands of these children have been collectively described as the “Lost Boys.”
The journeys these children took to safety are central to the name’s resonance. Walking for months across desert and bush, avoiding militias and landmines, often surviving on wild roots and sporadic aid, these boys formed quasi-familial groups for protection and survival. Those who reached refugee camps in Ethiopia and later Kenya lived for years in camp conditions that offered safety from immediate violence but imposed new hardships crowding, disease, limited education, and the psychological burden of grief and uncertainty. The combination of being physically separated from blood relatives and living in prolonged displacement made the term “lost” painfully literal.
Why we also speak of “Lost Girls”.
Early media and humanitarian attention focused heavily on male children—partly because of the visible phenomenon of groups of boys walking together, and partly because cultural patterns of the region meant many girls were more likely to be absorbed into foster arrangements or early marriages. Girls who were displaced often faced different fates: some were taken in by relatives or households and therefore did not present as visibly “unaccompanied,” while others became early victims of sexual violence, domestic servitude, or forced marriage. As scholars later pointed out, focusing only on “Lost Boys” obscured the many ways girls suffered and were rendered “lost” in social, educational, and legal ways (the phrase “invisible girls” has been used to capture this). Over time the shorthand expanded to “Lost Boys and Girls” to acknowledge the gendered diversity of suffering and displacement.
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Cultural and psychological dimensions of being “lost”.
Being a “lost” child in this context did not mean only geographic separation. Dinka and Nuer societies (and many other Sudanese cultures) operate through extended-family networks, age-sets, and ritual ties. When a child is separated from kin, clan obligations and rites of passage are disrupted. For many of the Lost Boys and Girls, rites that mark the transition to adulthood—circumcision/rituals for boys’ and girls’ cultural ceremonies—were missed; social status and identity markers were interrupted. These losses created long-term questions about identity and belonging even for those who survived and resettled abroad. Many resettled youths describe profound grief for the cultural and communal structures that shaped their upbringing. Memoirs and oral histories repeatedly emphasize not just the physical hardships of the journey but the emotional and identity wounds of being cut loose from the networks that normally anchor children in their societies.
Psychologically, long-term displacement and the trauma of war create conditions where children may feel “lost” in an emotional sense—caught between the memory of a home they cannot return to and the alienation of new societies where language, norms, and expectations differ. Resettlement introduced new stresses: adapting to new schooling systems, navigating unfamiliar social rules, and coping with survivor guilt for those who had lived while many relatives had died. For this reason, the “lost” in “Lost Boys and Girls” retains a haunting double meaning: lost physically and lost emotionally/culturally.
Humanitarian and policy implications of the name
The name’s prominence in Western media and humanitarian discourse produced concrete policy outcomes. In 2000 and the early 2000s, several countries—including the United States—accepted resettlement cohorts of “Lost Boys,” offering a path out of camps. NGOs, celebrities, and filmmakers (notably the documentary God Grew Tired of Us and books such as They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky) brought global attention to these children’s plight and pushed for resettlement and assistance programs. The label helped galvanize resources and public sympathy because it packaged complex suffering into an empathetic image: young, vulnerable boys forced to wander and survive.
However, the label had drawbacks too. While it drew aid, it sometimes simplified realities on the ground, obscuring the agency of youth, the role of women and girls, and the broader political causes of the conflict. The name risked freezing survivors into a single narrative of victimhood and displacement rather than acknowledging their resilience, varied experiences, and later contributions as community leaders, entrepreneurs, and advocates in both Africa and the diaspora. Scholars have critiqued how “Lost Boys” narratives have sometimes been commodified turned into a single-story media image thereby flattening complex realities.
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Memory, meaning, and the contemporary use of the term.
As South Sudan gained independence (2011) and then suffered further internal conflicts, the term “Lost Boys and Girls” sometimes resurged to describe new cohorts of displaced children. The original generation who travelled to Ethiopia and Kenya and then resettled abroad have grown into adults who actively shape how the phrase is remembered and used. Some have founded NGOs, authored memoirs, or returned to help rebuild communities; others struggle with the long-term fallout of trauma and social dislocation. The “Lost Boys and Girls” label persists because it continues to point to a particularly visible pattern of child displacement in Sudanese history, but survivors and scholars both emphasize that the label must be used with care—recognizing those who were “lost” while not denying their agency or the structural causes of their predicament.
Why naming matters
Names shape humanitarian response, public perception, and survivors’ own self-understanding. The name “Lost Boys and Girls” drew attention and aid, but it also shaped the narrative arc—how the world saw those children and what solutions were pursued. For instance, resettlement policy focused on some cohorts (notably males who presented as unaccompanied) while other vulnerable groups (such as girls or internally displaced families who did not have access to resettlement pathways) received less attention. Naming also influences memory: the label consolidates multiple, diverse experiences under a single headline term, making it easier to teach, to memorialize, and to galvanize public action—but also easier to simplify and to overlook nuance. Thoughtful engagement with the term thus requires pairing the evocative shorthand with detailed attention to gender, culture, and political context.
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They are called the “Lost Boys and Girls” of South Sudan because the phrase most powerfully captures the multiple dimensions of their experience: literal separation from family and home during the wars; the physical wandering and perilous journeys they endured; the rupture of cultural and social ties; and the deep emotional and psychological dislocation that followed. The name has been useful for rallying humanitarian aid and public sympathy, but it also risks simplifying complex lives. Contemporary scholarship and survivor testimony urge that while the term be retained for its historical resonance, it must be accompanied by careful attention to the diversity of experiences especially those of girls and women and to survivors’ long-term needs and agency as they rebuild their lives.
These are the main sources used to support the factual claims above. Page numbers are given for the printed memoirs and books where specific narrative details and context are drawn from their introductory chapters.
Deng, A., Deng, B., Ajak, B., & Bernstein, J. A. (2005). They poured fire on us from the sky: The true story of three Lost Boys from Sudan (10th anniversary reissue). PublicAffairs. (See especially the Introduction and Chapters 1–3 for firsthand accounts of separation, marches, and camp life, e.g., pp. 1–32).
Dau, J. B., & Sweeney, M. S. (2007). God grew tired of us: The heartbreaking, inspiring story of a Lost Boy of Sudan. National Geographic. pp. 5–28 for early life and flight; pp. 120–172 for camp and resettlement experiences).
International Rescue Committee (IRC). (n.d.). The Lost Boys of Sudan. IRC. Retrieved from IRC website (background on displacement and resettlement programs).
“Lost Boys of Sudan.” (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from the Lost Boys of Sudan article (overview and synthesis of historical information).
El Jack, A. (2018). The “invisible” women of Sudan: Gender and displacement. Refugee Studies and Analyses (discussion of gendered differences in displacement and the idea of “invisible girls”; see pp. 45–59).
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