Lawyer and journalist Bec Hamilton, JD ’08, has spent the past several years working in Sudan, reporting and writing about events as they unfold there. Here’s her compelling new article in Foreign Policy magazine about the days-long attack on Abyei town, which sits in a disputed, oil-rich territory between Northern and Southern Sudan.

She describes the government-controlled area as “eerily quiet” now, with homes burned and looted, and most of the civilian population gone.  South of Abyei town, Bec interviewed residents who fled the area, some of them separated from family in the chaos.

“Many sustained injuries as they ran,” she writes.  “Mothers tell of how difficult it was for their young children on a journey of up to five days with no food or water. Sunday Taban Lobaya, interviewed in the South Sudan town of Wau, said her two-year-old son died of dehydration on the way.  ‘I had to just bury him and keep going with my other children,’ said Lobaya, who is seven months pregnant.”

A Special Correspondent on Sudan for The Washington Post, Bec is also the author of a recent book, “Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide,” a years-long investigation into the U.S.-based citizen advocacy movement for Darfur policy.  And if that’s not enough, she’s a Pulitzer Center grantee and a Fellow with the New America Foundation.

Check out her website here and get inspired.