For 12 years Emmanuel Jal, a Sudanese musician and former child soldier, kept returning to Sudan to try to find his family. His sister only realized he was safe when she heard him on a BBC radio program. It took more than a decade to reconnect, but by being reunited at all, they were still considered lucky.
Most families in conflict regions remain separated forever, and when a refugee is searching in vain for a family member, you don’t want to simply tell her, “There’s an app for that.” But now, there actually is.
Ericsson and Refugees United, in partnership with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and mobile operator MTN in Uganda, have launched the first pilot project to trace and reconnect refugee and IDP (internally displaced persons) families through the use of cell phones. The program lets refugees register themselves on mobile phones as well as search for loved ones and subsequently reconnect via an anonymous database using SMS or mobile Internet. The cellular site is like a Facebook for refugees. You can search as well as leave and accept messages. It’s a virtual home for people with no homeland.
According to UNHCR, there are more than 5 million people of concern in East Africa, more specifically the Horn of Africa, which is about 14 percent of the total amount of people that UNHCR assists around the world. UNHCR’s main operations in this region include Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia.
Computer access remains elusive in the region, but mobile phones are a big business. Families will save and sell their food rations just to buy a cell phone. Utilizing this readily available technology, Refugees United can create a social network of refugees that connects people in days instead of years.
In the following video, Emmanuel Jal recounts his journey from child soldier to refugee in the spoken word during a press conference at the Clinton Global Initiative. Hopefully with this latest effort, he’ll be able to focus on constructing only works of joy in the future.
Screengrab via YouTube.