Stop Kony, or help the Invisible Children?
Diana Anyim // April 29, 2012
March 5, 2012, Facebook and Twitter were covered with STOP KONY pictures and a link to a YouTube video that now has over 88 million views. After watching the heart-wrenching video, released by the Invisible Children organization, many people suddenly decided they were activists. There was a sudden pressing need to share the video with friends. When I logged on to Facebook that day, I recognized the name Kony, but didn’t realize that the video would be related to the Kony my parents had told me about years prior.
I immediately told my parents about the Kony Campaign. “Kony? Joseph Kony? He’s still alive?” was the first thing my father said. My father was born in Tororo, Uganda and lived there for almost twenty-eight years. My mother was also born in Uganda, in a small village called Soroti. Both of my parents were shocked when I told them that Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, and Oprah were all supporting and promoting the STOP KONY campaign. My mother went on to say, “They are about 15 years too late. Kony is either dead or dying.”
Joseph Kony, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is a Ugandan rebel who’s been leading an army trying to fight the Ugandan government for decades. His Lord’s Resistance Army is known for brutal war crimes and kidnapping thousands of children from their homes and using them as soldiers, sex slaves, and forced laborers. Jason Russell, an American filmmaker, visited Uganda in 2003 and saw first-hand the effect that Kony and the LRA had on children living in Uganda. Jason was inspired to come home and spread awareness about the things he had witnessed. Jason co-founded the non-profit organization Invisible Children which aims to have Joseph Kony arrested; this will supposedly save thousands of women and children, thus allowing them to live a normal life without fear of the LRA rebels. But the situation is more complex than the video makes it out to be.
When I watched the KONY 2012 video, the one thing that had a tremendous impact on me was Jacob’s story. Jacob is one of the children filmed in the video who is scared of being captured by Kony. In the video, Jason asks Jacob, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Jacob replies, “I want to be a lawyer, but I don’t have money to pay for my fees.” In the video Jacob also says, “If you can kill us, you kill us, for us now we don’t want to stay, no one is taking care of us, we are not going to school, how we are going to stay in our future?”
I could immediately sense what Jacob was feeling: he was haunted by the thought that he has nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to, and absolutely no one who cares about whether he lives or dies. So how is capturing Kony changing his future?
What is the point of the Kony 2012 campaign? Is it to find someone that has been almost impossible to capture for over 16 years? Or is it to help the children who feel they have nothing to live for? Invisible Children claimed to make over $8 million in donations in its 2011 statement of financial position. Yet, after expenses, only approximately one million dollars went toward the actual cause.
Where did the rest of the money go?
If the organization really wanted to help the “invisible children”, why wouldn’t it take that money and build schools, or shelters – somewhere they can feel safe? Kony is only a small fraction of the problem that the invisible children of Uganda face every day.
My parents left Uganda in 1988 when Joseph Kony was just beginning his crimes. Since 1986, Kony has enslaved over 30,000 children in Uganda. While this is indeed a huge number of children suffering under the cruel hand of Kony, consider this: in 2012 Child Info recorded over 500, 000 child deaths in Africa due to malaria, a disease that can be easily prevented with the right medicine. The non-profit organization Missionaries of Africa discovered that more than 2,500 children in Africa die each day due to lack of clean water. So when you factor in how many children die every year from completely preventable causes, 30, 000 children over 26 years seems comparatively small.
For the first time in over thirty years, Uganda is in the middle of establishing real peace. Ugandan citizens are afraid that this new STOP KONY campaign will bring more bad than good to the people living in their country. Kony is constantly surrounded by troops and anyone threatening that comes close to them will be killed. Many people will die before Kony is captured, and even after he’s captured the country will still face chaos. Yes, Kony is a criminal and he should be stopped, but what happens after he is arrested? Have they not realized that he has a whole army that works for him? Even if they capture Kony, one of his many soldiers could easily continue his legacy.
Before you donate to Kony 2012, or any charity, stop and think: where is my money really going? Is this cause portrayed legitimately, objectively? There are many charities that focus on actually improving the lives of Ugandan children – UNICEF, Red Cross, or Girl Up, for example. Do your research.
The STOP KONY campaign is incredibly misguided. The Invisible Children organization shouldn’t be simplifying a complex issue by giving the world a scapegoat to hate. Instead, the organization should have focused on its namesake – it should focus on Uganda’s invisible children. The invisible children of Uganda need something to live for, and they need to be shown that the world cares about their suffering. One of the slogans for the campaign is “it’s time to make the invisible children, visible” – yet the children are nowhere to be seen.
