Machot Lat Thiep

Machot Lat Thiep is a South Sudanese former child soldier and one of the displaced young people known as the Lost Boys of Sudan. He later settled in the United States. In 2014 he accompanied journalist Robert Young Pelton and photographer and filmmaker Tim Freccia back to South Sudan, where renewed fighting had followed the country's independence.

Their journey became Saving South Sudan, a project published through VICE in print, online and documentary form. Thiep's participation brought a returning refugee's personal experience into the reporting, connecting life in the Sudanese diaspora with the political upheaval and human consequences of the war.