Remembering the Ones We Lost (ROWL) is a people’s project on memory and
healing in South Sudan. ROWL was co-founded in 2014 by Awak Bior who is CLTC’s International Justice Expert. Together with a small group of South Sudanese activists, Ms. Bior works towards promoting public memorialisation as a way of healing for those who have suffered devastating violence that began in December 2013.
The country was thrown into chaos and thousands of people were being killed at an alarming rate, with little acknowledgement of the very real and human cost of war. The project is the first of its kind in South Sudan’s history.
ROWL project also encourages individual and collective reconciliation with the consequences of the country’s violent past, and seeks to accompany the people of South Sudan as they move forward together, despite the horrific legacies of war.
The project’s aim is to humanise the cost of war by counting and naming all those dead and missing, and by creating a collective public memorial. ROWL’s message echoes the cries of South Sudanese people throughout the country and of those scattered abroad; end the violence, enough is enough. Never again.
Today ROWL has grown into an organisation that also undertakes advocacy on a
range of related issues, including to support the country’s transitional justice process under Chapter 5 of the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan.
ROWL’s work is widely recognised as a ground breaking project with significant potential to contribute to and shape South Sudan’s efforts on transitional justice. ROWL places an emphasis on acknowledging the massive and grave human rights violations that have occurred through the simple process of giving dignity to the dead by publicly naming and remembering them.
As South Sudan moves forward, ROWL continues to support community, government, regional and multi-lateral stakeholder efforts to make peace a lasting reality for the world’s newest nation.
You can find out more about ROWL by visiting the website , and view the names of those lost and remembered on the memorial page.
You can also support the project through this crowdfunding platform . Every penny, cent and shilling matters and will provide direct support to ROWL’s community of volunteers who are working hard to collect all the names of those lost in South Suda