Kony 2012 is something most of us are now familiar with thanks to a video that went viral by the Invisible Children, a charity that operates within Uganda wishing to make the invisible children of war visible.

Joseph Kony is a the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) which was formed in Northern Uganda who’s beliefs are based on the Ten Commandments and Acholi tradition. The LRA have been associated with human rights violations such as murder, abduction, sexual harassment and mutilation, and that is what  Bobby Bailey, Laren Poole and Jason Russell found on their trip to Africa to document the genocide in Darfur. Upon finding out the atrocities committed by the LRA they begun Invisible Children, a charity which wishes to not only highlight acts of war being committed of which we do not know of, but also to help the children affected by the LRA who are trying to escape, along with their communities, through the unison of the Western World in making Kony’s name as famous as that of Lady Gaga and Facebook’s Zuckerberg.  

 

Looking further into the charity however, with it’s rating of 3/4 stars on Charity Navigator, which gives ratings to U.S based charity organisations, there have been a lot of issues amongst the good they have brought to the Northern Ugandan community. Some of these issues have stemmed from the way they handle what is happening in Uganda, like for example how their want to bring peace through asking for help from the government therefore by default the United Nations led to many deaths in relation of all agreements but not the capture of man behind the LRA.

Juba, South Sudan, 13th November 2006, the United Nations finally agreed to a meeting with LRA leader Joseph Kony in order to address the humanitarian allegations against him and to advance peace talks between both the LRA and the Government of Uganda. Though there was an agreement in 2006 to go along with the peace settlement though only finalised in 2008 after 2 years of negotiations, according to the S.1067, Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009, findings, section 6, though they made a final peace agreement in April 2008, in May 2008 Kony refused to sign it and commenced new attacks on Northeastern Congo. This continued into September, and according to statistics mentioned in Section 7 of the bill, since that time in 2008 the attacks to Northeastern Congo and Southern Sudan “led to the abduction of 1,500 civilians… and the displacement of more than 540,000 people”. 
A couple of months later, December 2008,  military organisations from all three countries trying to secure themselves against the LRA launched an operation against them, focussing on their bases in Northeastern Congo in order to capture Kony, however this mission failed and the LRA retaliated by killing an estimated 900 people in 2 months within both Congo and Southern Sudan. 

Although Kony failed to sign the final peace agreement Uganda continued with their efforts to restore the areas affected which the Invisible Children Charity helped with admittedly, though they also aided Uganda’s security forces who themselves have human rights allegations against them though they feel this is completely okay as they are not as bad and what the LRA is doing which just makes it seem as though they are in fact fighting a big fire with a smaller one, and though there is corruption within African politics, that is still no excuse for funding them thus making them stronger because if you believe you may be able to have someone as ‘evil’ as Kony sign a peace agreement, then surely you would believe that a nation that has been the attacked and the attacker would also be willing to sign something similar, correct? 

We have all been taught as children that two wrongs do not make a right however it is easy to understand why people feel that Invisible Children Inc has made a mistake here and with its inability to have its finances externally audited to this day raising questions as to how the millions of dollars’ worth of donations are being distributed.
Joseph Kony is the bad guy, yes, but there are many ways of handling a situation and though it is admirable the way that Invisible Children have united millions of people worldwide to raise awareness of this, it is crucial that we perhaps look further into who we support and look beyond just this one cause of injustice but instead at the many other injustices that haven’t yet become viral.

Maria Arroja Ferreira 

(Source: newsofmyworld)