Ashton DeLano
Staff Writer
In mid-February, the activist group Invisible Children released the “Kony 2012” video, a video prompting activism across the world to stop a warlord in central Africa.
The warlord in question, Joseph Kony, is leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a militant group in central Africa. The LRA has kidnapped tens of thousands of children, turning them into child soldiers and sex slaves.
The goal of Invisible Children is to put “Kony 2012” on posters, bracelets, and blogs, so everyone in the world starts scratching their head and wondering “Who is this Kony?”
Their final aim is convincing the United States to train the Ugandan military to catch Kony and allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute him.
But there are many problems with this goal, the video itself and even Invisible Children.
The hopes of the video’s creators are slightly far-fetched, if not impossible, and the video is also very misleading.
First of all, even with U.S. support, catching Kony would be problematic for the Ugandan military. This is probably because Kony has not been in Uganda for more than six years, a fact “Kony 2012” might have forgot to mention.
Also, Uganda is on bad diplomatic terms with the countries in which Kony resides, meaning their military cannot cross the border to capture him, according to National Public Radio.
Also, the LRA has been reduced from tens of thousands to only about 300 members in the past few years, according to ForeignPolicy.com.
The worst part of this idea is that the Ugandan military itself has been accused of human rights violations, including exploiting child soldiers, according to BBC News. This needs to be made clear: Invisible Children wants to use American soldiers to support a military that uses child soldiers, in stopping another group that uses child soldiers.
There is also little reason for the U.S. to assist the Ugandan military when there are more important problems in Africa such as poverty and widespread hunger.
Ugandans don’t care much for Kony because he has been absent from their nation for more than six years. They care about supporting their families and rebuilding their lives.
The video seems to be geared more toward young Western teenagers so they will support Invisible Children, which has donated only 32 percent, or about $2.8 million of its multimillion-dollar income, to helping people in Africa, according to their own tax reports.
The rest of the money went to staff salaries, travel and film production. They even left almost $5 million unspent.
Invisible Children would rather tell people about Kony and how to stop him rather than try to help the people of Uganda with actual problems.
While I support Invisible Children in their attempts to stop the use of child soldiers everywhere, I do not support their methods.
