Glossary: The Lost Boys of Sudan

Definition: The second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2003) pitted the north and south of Sudan against each other. It was triggered by Muhammad Jaafar Numeiri's dissolving of the country's assembly, his attempt to prevent the country's oil revenue from reaching the south, and his imposition of Islamic law, or Sharia law, which alienated large segments of the population. A rebellion exploded. Numeiri was overthrown in 1985. But the conflict escalated.

Some 2 million people were killed, tens of thousands of children were orphaned. Among them: 27,000 boys who came to be known as the Lost Boys of Sudan, the majority of them belonging to the Dinka or Nuer tribes. International relief agencies nicknamed them the Lost Boys. The words stuck.

Beginning in 1999, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S. State Department recommended that the United States resettle 3,600 Lost Boys. About 500 arrived in the U.S. in 1999, the rest in subsequent years, and all were eligible for citizenship after five years' residency in the United States.

Writer Dave Eggers fictionalized the life of one of the Lost Boys, Valentino Achak Deng, in What Is the What (2006).

At the Beijing Olympics in the Summer of 2008, one of the Lost Boys, Lopez Lomong, was named to carry the American flag. Thirteen months earlier, Lomong had become a citizen of the United States.