The Foreign Service Journal, March 2013

A Hopeful Homecoming BY LAUREEN REAGAN T hroughout my career, I’ve had many opportunities to work with people displaced by violence, wars and natural disasters in Haiti, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Sudan and Thailand. Yet none of those experiences has left as indelible an impression as working with migrants returning to what would shortly become South Sudan. Following the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended half a century of successive civil wars in Sudan, some of the estimated four million people displaced within Sudan—the largest internally displaced population in the world—gradually THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2013 35 lems as insignificant compared to the suffering of so many people. Thoughts of advancing one’s career become much less important than helping people who have lost everything, and are starting all over in a foreign land. Acting on that conviction led me to challenge official guidance when I saw a better way to proceed. That independence did not enhance my popularity in Washington (where I chose never to serve), but I believe it generally improved procedures and yielded real results. During his 31-year Foreign Service career, Bruce Beardsley served in Vietnam, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Denmark, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Mexico and Kosovo. A Sudanese family stands in front of their hut in Mundri, South Sudan. These people were refugees and came back to their village to start a new life. © iStockphoto.com/Claudiad Three proud ladies return to their homeland following South Sudan’s independence. Photo courtesy of Laureen Reagan