The Invisible Children video on Youtube is the subject of a lot of discussion these past 24 hours. Their Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/invisiblechildren
So what's going on?
Joseph Kony and the LRA
Joseph Kony used to be a village witch-doctor in Uganda, and was the son of a Catholic father and Anglican mother. He formed a militia known as the United Holy Salvation Army (UHSA) which proved to be popular among those disaffected by ongoing internal Ugandan power grabs and power shuffles. His aim with this group was to establish a theocratic Ugandan government based on the principles of the Ten Commandments. The UHSA quickly militarised and was renamed the United Democratic Christian Army. It was in these early days of the LRA, that Kony began a tactic of using child soldiers, but more on that later.
Kony is deeply religious and presents a Messiah-like demeanour to his followers. His actions range across Uganda, the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
In 2005 Kony and the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) were indicted by the International Criminal Court and arrest warrants were issued for 5 members of the LRA, including Kony, for 33 charges.
From Wikipedia;
There are 33 charges, 12 counts are crimes against humanity, which include murder, enslavement, sexual enslavement and rape. There are another 21 counts of war crimes which include murder, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, pillaging, inducing rape, and forced enlisting of children into the rebel ranks. [ICC Chief Prosecutor] Ocampo said that "Kony was abducting girls to offer them as rewards to his commanders."Since 9/11, the US has also listed Kony and the LRA as terrorists and have increasingly contributed funding, military personnel and legislative force to hunting down Kony and the LRA. They have been weakened and pushed back from various strongholds, but Kony himself has not yet been captured.
In short, Kony is a complete bastard and a despicable human being.
Child soldiers and rape as a weapon of war
Among the various heinous crimes Kony and the LRA are accused of committing is the use of child soldiers. The practice of 'recruiting' child soldiers is disgusting in and of itself, even before this practice is allied to the rest of the LRA's crimes.
The usual method, as reported in instances where this has taken place, is brutally simple. A militia moves into a town or village, kills or recruits all adult males, kidnaps and rapes all women and girls, and takes the boys at gunpoint as forcible conscripts. The boys are ordered to torture, kill and rape, often under threat of death themselves.
Organisations that have been set up to rescue and rehabilitate former child soldiers describe the most broken of children - permanently traumatised by the crimes they have committed and the outrages they have suffered themselves. The situation is one where the criminal is also a victim and also a child - an ethical minefield. The battle hardened rapist and murderer is also in this instance a victim, and one that may never recover from the trauma they have suffered.
Since 1986, some sources have placed the number of child conscripts forcibly recruited by the LRA as high as 104,000.
Among the many other crimes Kony and the LRA are accused of is rape as a terror and/or punitive weapon against civilians. As mentioned above, the LRA are accused of raping women and girls. One of the charges levelled against Kony by the ICC was of using girls as 'rewards' for his soldiers.
Invisible Children
Invisible Children is an organisation set up to bring attention to Kony and the LRA (who now have largely been driven from Uganda itself, but are still active in the Sudan and DRC).
Much of the current debate against Invisible Children calls into question the nature of their work. Some comment has been made of the lack of transparency in how they use their funding. Charity Tracker apparently give them a score of two out of four for the use of their donations (having checked the site itself, they are currently standing at 3/4), they are said to donate only about 30% give or take to helping rescused and rehabilitated child soldiers, and they are apparently not audited independently - something other charitable organisations describe as lacklustre at best.
The focus of their mission in Uganda and the broader region is to 'make Kony famous' in order to put pressure on the UN and US for greater military intervention. Others have called this into question, highlighting the fact that if you want to stop the forcible conscription of child soldiers, it is a dubious thing to call for military action against a man who may be using these children as bodyguards - 'meat shields' for want of a better term.
Others have also highlighted the connection of Invisible Children to the Sudan People's Liberation Army or SPLA, a paramilitary that has become increasingly mainstreamed over the past decade, who are also accused of many of the same crimes as the LRA, especially that of forcible child conscription.
From Wikipedia;
In 2004, a year before the peace deal, the Coalition to Stop Child Soldiers, estimated that there were between 2,500 and 5,000 children serving in the SPLA.
In a nutshell
I'm not going to shock anyone when I say that Joseph Kony is an insane and monstrous zealot. Nor am I going to shock anybody by saying that I think forcible child conscription and rape as a weapon of war are both monstrous crimes. Whether we agree or disagree with Invisible Children's methods or motives one thing is apparent - they have at least succeeded in refreshing international interest an opprobium on some of these abominable practices. If you have doubts about Invisible Children, by all means search out other programs that may be more directly involved in assisting former child soldiers. One place to start might be here - Child Soldiers International, formerly the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. They may be better positioned to use your money more productively.
Discussions
The blogosphere is abuzz with this. If I was writing a book on this topic I could go much further. This however is a blog post, and I run the risk of the TL;DR's if I continue on much more. To that end I will shower you with linkstorm.
Invisible Children
https://www.facebook.com/invisiblechildren on Facebook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc Youtube video
Criticisms
https://whitthef.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/kony-2012/
http://www.reddit.com/r/DAE/comments/qlqzd/am_i_the_only_one_who_is_suspicious_about/ many, many links provided in the commentary thread
http://innovateafrica.tumblr.com/ commentary in the context of what's happening on the ground in Uganda
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18890947431/we-got-trouble
Data and Resources
Charity Navigator (to clarify my comment above, they have a score of 2/4 on accountability and transparency, but 3/4 on their financial status)
http://www.child-soldiers.org/home
Joseph Kony on Wikipedia
LRA on Wikipedia
An article on child soldiers and their rehabilitation
The UN's Africa Renewal site
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