Ugandans haven’t been sitting on their asses doing nothing about Kony and the LRA rebels for the past 20 years. This war has lasted over 2 decades and it’s disrespectful to the countrymen & women who’ve actually been doing something about this war all along, even before this viral campaign, to see comments like,”we should let the Ugandans fight their own battles”…”why did the kids let themselves be abducted?”.
Trust me; if we had the resources that the western world had, we would’ve dealt with this war on our own, we don’t want anymore hidden agenda-attached aid to be held over our heads. We’re happy about the campaign, it’s great exposure, it’s a good cause but i also wanted to pay homage to a strong Ugandan lady who was one of the pioneers of the fight against Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army; Betty Bigombe.
In 1988, President Yoweri Museveni appointed her “Minister of State for Pacification of Northern Uganda, Resident in Gulu,” a post in which she was tasked with convincing the LRA rebels to give up their struggle.Unable to convince any other government members to go with her, including her own aides, Betty Bigombe set off North to hear the Acholi grievances and find a way to bring hope in a hopeless and hurting land. Her journey took her through mined roads, past destroyed military vehicles and deep into the jungles where abducted child soldiers stood guard in the bushes with Ak-47’s. Fearing she would not return alive, she sent letters to her children and the president expressing her last will that her children be given education and care.Following the failure of military efforts to defeat the rebels, Bigombe initiated contact with rebel leader Joseph Kony in June 1993. This began what would be known as the “Bigombe talks”. Read more of Betty Bigombe’s full inspirational story AND watch Betty’s 2008 PBS interview
So, yeah, when KONY 2012 went viral, there were bunch of critical articles that pointed out that Ugandans have been running organizations that are much, much better at meeting Uganda’s present-day needs. And I compiled some of them as I was reading. But I’m sure this is missing many, many organizations, and this is more of a preliminary post than anything else.
All descriptions come from the groups’ wesbsites.
Concerned Children and Youth Organization (CCYA): In the aftermath of abduction, war, disease and poverty, we cultivate communities of resilient children and youth. Co-founded in 2001 by concerned individuals including Angelina Atyam, named a 1998 U.N. Human Rights Prize Winner, we invite you to become a new “we:” to practice reconciliation, rebuilding, reforesting so we may live into a more beautiful, hopeful peace.
Concerned Parents Association (CPA) Lira: Concerned Parents Association is a direct implementation agency of relief and development programs by working through grass root structures called Parent Support Groups (PSG) and Youth Groups that address the needs of communities in Northern Uganda. To date the organization has more than 500 active Parent Support Groups and more than 100 youth groups in that above districts in Northern Uganda.
Art For Children Uganda: Art for Children Uganda (ACU) is a nongovernmental organization that is committed to lift the voice of all children through creative means, especially art, that promotes creative participation and cultural awareness and develops creativity, critical thinking, self-expression, influence historical events, recreate and promote psychosocial healing. Using our theater for development approach, Art for children Uganda empowers children to break the silence on what affects them.
Friends of Orphans: Friends of Orphans (FRO) was founded and is administered by former child soldiers, orphans and abductees from Pader District, all of whom were and continue to be affected by the war in Northern Uganda. It is a fully registered non-for-profit NGO… FRO founder Ricky Anywar Richard and others conceived Friends of Orphans in 1999 whilst pursuing degrees at the University of Makerere. From their experiences as former abductees and orphans – many of whom lost immediate and extended family members, friends and neighbours and suffered displacement – led them to commit to the ongoing and unmet needs of their community displaced in IDP camps and resettlement communities.
Grassroots Uganda: Grassroots Uganda was started as a marketing tool to promote income generating activities for impoverished Ugandan women as a way of female empowerment. Grassroots Uganda provides the women with training, supplies, and a market for their products. 100 % of all profits paid to Grassroots Uganda goes back to the village which made the crafts.
Women of Kireka: An initiative to economically emancipate ninenteen internally displaced women in Kampala, Uganda. The women fled Uganda’s long-running rebel war against Joseph Kony in Northern Uganda to an IDP camp near the Kireka rock quarry. The project is designed to transition them from their current low-wage, dangerous occupation as rock crushers to a new life as jewelry designers and artisans.
Children’s Chance International: Committed to serve the disadvantaged Children, youth and women affected by war through reaching out to them, advocating for their rights and assisting them grow and develop fully.
Important. There’s no shortage of information about the Kony 2012 campaign and the positives and negatives therein, but the fact remains that there is a problem in this region and these organisations which need which your support.
You do not need to ask my permission to share this. Please link it widely. For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts.
I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, I’m strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.
KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I’m not alone.
Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money funds the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission.
Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on funding African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.
As Christ Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of IC’s programming, “There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. […] It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”
Still, Kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.
Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.
Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.
If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Kony’s crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.
~ Grant Oyston, visiblechildren@grantoyston.com
Grant Oyston is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr.com anywhere you see posts about KONY 2012.
Since Uganda is getting a lot of interest on the internet right now, I figured it was important to try to present an alternative source of information. Invisible Children is, as many already know, a highly problematic organization, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying to help. Here are some other sources of information, statistics, and ways to donate/help.
- American Progress’s 2007 report, “What to Do About Joseph Kony”
- Amnesty International’s 2011 report on Uganda
- Global Security’s page on the Lord’s Resistance Army
- Washington Post, “A Child’s Hell in the Lord’s Resistance Army,” May 2006.
- HRW: “Protect civilians from LRA abuses,” May 2011
- AllAfrica.com, “Amnesty International wants Kony arrested,” May 2010
- AI’s Uganda Portal
- Human Rights Watch’s Uganda portal
- Democracy Now!’s Uganda portal
Ah, yes, I was looking for this post.
1. Watch the Movie
2. Reblog
3. Go to the website linked below and follow the movie’s directionsDid you visit the website yet? Did you reblog this yet? You should.
Edit: I need to add this, because in my mind it is important. Invisible Children is not perfect. I see that, and there is evidence that it could be improved. However, it is also not the dark and shady organization that many people are making it out to be.
Sharing the message about Kony and raising awareness is important. I feel that this movie definitely does that. It is not just sending rich white kids to Africa. If you want me to direct you to horrible NGO’s which blatantly ignore the vibrancy of the various African countries’ cultures, and create an image where all of Africa is a continent of pain and despair and starving black children, I can point the way. They do exist and they do provide people with a vastly inaccurate view of what life is like in most African countries.
So many people (especially in the United States), teens and adults alike, live in a bubble of ignorance. This video may be the first time that they even hear of such atrocities and crimes like those Kony commits. This video is well presented and interesting, and its primary goal is to raise awareness, to push our leaders to take a stand and do something.
Perhaps the perfect answer hasn’t been reached yet in respect to how the situation is being handled, but many of the arguments made by people asking this to stop being reblogged are actually said in the movie (i.e. how Kony uses the peacekeeping process to perpetuate killing and raping people).
Knowledge is never the wrong answer. How people use that knowledge can be. I hope that anyone who sees this movie will go and research the situation further. Perhaps they will find inspiration in it to make a difference in another way.
Why do people have the desire to dismantle movements that promote thoughtful discourse? It blows my mind how hard some people fight against it.
Use this video to open your eyes. Look throughout the world. Look in your own backyard. Be an activist for positive change. Hold people accountable who do wrong. Research things before you jump in head first. Don’t be afraid to be passionate. Realize the world is not clear cut. It is not black and white. It will never be black and white.
Take responsibility. Produce change. Make the world you live in better. And if you are a hater: shut the fuck up.
Correct me if I’m wrong here. (HT: @SaynaTheSpiffy.)
A person - let’s call them “X” - is in charge of a young woman. X does not allow the young woman to date or have sex; her
“purity”virginity must be preserved. In fact, X strictly limits the amount to which the young woman can interact with men of any age. When the young woman is old enough, and when X has found a partner for the young woman who is sufficiently advantageous to X, the young woman is, with or without her consent, bound into marriage with the partner X has chosen.Now, here’s the dilemma:
If X is a family member, the paragraph above describes “time-honored traditional marriage practices”.
If X is not a family member, the paragraph above describes sex trafficking.
I can’t be the only one who sees a problem here.
Traditional marriage practices among most white people ARE sex trafficking. Or actually human trafficking, because the family of the bride is selling not only a fucktoy but also an unpaid labourer and child-bearer whose value depends solely on how well she succeeds in fulfilling her purpose. The whole father walking the bride to the altar thing is a symbol of property changing owner. It’s a transaction.
And I don’t care how much you want your white wedding and the whole thing, princess dresses and all, I cannot ever think of it as “romantic”, or see it as anything else than an obscene patriarchy-fest in which YOU who think you are the focus of the celebration are the one person who doesn’t really matter to the institution of marriage. Your dress is to your wedding what a nicely designed package is to a nifty new gadget, and your value is defined by the same criteria as the gadget’s. It’s revolting.
Romantic love and marriage have a very short mutual history.
Hey, it’s still Human Trafficking Awareness Day for… an hour. SO HERE’S A THING FROM MY WEBSITE
What is human trafficking?
Human trafficking, simply put, is modern-day slavery. When someone is exploited for labor or sex — forced to work without fair wages, or forced into prostitution — they are a victim of human trafficking. Despite the verb “traffic” which implies movement across borders, victims can be enslaved in their own hometowns.
For a more detailed definition, see the Polaris Project’s website.
Who are the victims of human trafficking?
Human trafficking touches everyone: men and women; adults, teens, and children; citizens of developed and developing countries. That being said, 8 out of 10 trafficking victims are women, and half are children.
Where does human trafficking happen?
Short answer: Everywhere. Visit slaverymap.org to see reported instances of human trafficking in your area.
But I don’t see people walking around in chains… How do traffickers keep their victims enslaved?
While the bondage is sometimes literal, with people being locked up to keep them from running away, traffickers use a variety of methods to keep a hold on their victims. Here are just a few of them.
Hey, kids. It’s Human Trafficking Awareness Day today. It’s so important to acknowledge that human trafficking happens on a global scale and to try and dismiss any thoughts one might have about it being a “far from my bed problem”, as the Dutch expression goes. People being bought and sold into slavery happens in every country, on every continent, every single day. Human trafficking is a crime against humanity. It is a world war only the perpetrators and the victims see, but if we, the so called free people, choose to turn our backs, there is no hope for any of us.
Participating in organisations and donating are valuable deeds, to be sure, but sometimes looking around you and recognising every facet, no matter how terrible, of the society you live in, the society all of us live in, can have just as much of an impact. Dare to think for yourself and to act as your conscience would have it.
EU legislation on modern day slavery
Second Life of Chattanooga encourages human trafficking awareness
You or your loved ones might or mightn’t end up in human trafficking circles (and I hope from the bottom of my heart you’ll never see the inside of it), but please spare a thought for the millions of men and especially women and children who are being exploited right now.
Thank you.
Crap, is that today… HOW DID THIS CATCH ME OFF GUARD
Salute!The 1,000th Wednesday Protest.
I just want to write about how inspiring, passionate, and courageous these women are (my favorite Halmoni, Pak Ok-seon Halmoni can be seen in the top photo wearing a blue scarf).
They are in their 80’s and 90’s and they have been demonstrating in front of the Japanese Embassy every fucking week for 20 years. In the rain, in the snow, in the heat, in the wind, without fail. They’ve faced social stigma, being called whores and prostitutes, they’ve been asked by their families to not go public but they go out there EVERY FUCKING WEEK.
And they do it because they want the world to know what happened to them, what’s still happening in wars all across the globe, what’s happening across national borders, what’s happening in school campuses, churches, and pretty much every corner of this goddamn planet.
And that is sexual violence against women.
And when you ask them why they’re out there every week, they’ll tell you that yes, they want their apology from the Japanese government - they want someone to look them in the face and say yes, it happened and I. am. sorry. But they’ll also tell you that they’re out there because they don’t want what happened to them to happen to a single other woman, ever again.
