Kony 2012
88 million views and counting. That’s how broad the reach of one single video is, thanks to viral attention it received from the public. It was all the work of a charity by the name of Invisible Children, who hoped to raise awareness of the terrible crimes happening in Uganda at the hands of a complex criminal organisation led by a man called Joseph Kony. If you know little of the story, you must have been hiding under a rock for the first few months of the year. It was literally everywhere – from the Internet (where its attention was rapidly scattered across the globe, thanks to Twitter) to the traditional press – everyone received word of this pivotal video, which was designed to make the mastermind of a destructive ‘famous’, in order for International forces to apprehend him and bring him to justice.
While the best way to understand the initiative is to watch the film, the premise is that it shows the damage which the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has done to Uganda. Recruiting child soldiers to fight with no specific cause, it’s the workings of Joseph Kony and his claims of being possessed by spirits. His claims have been convincing enough for him to abduct over 66,000 children in his time (1986-now) in order to allow him to evade capture from the local authorities. The youngsters are at the heart of Invisible Children’s initiatives, the charity would like to save them from the near-inevitable risk of being takes by Kony and his forces, which wouldn’t happen if the fugitive was arrested for the crimes he’s got away with for the past few decades.
If you’re still yet to see the “Kony 2012” thirty-minute film, one of the components of their action plan was to raise the profile of Joseph Kony with a ‘Cover the Night’ scheme. The plan was to donate money to the charity in order to get an action kit, from which you could pin up posters and various other things on 20th April, all across the globe. This, however, wasn’t as successful as they may have hoped, but those in-the-know have become aware of the public’s interest in Kony’s apprehension nonetheless and plans have been put into action to bring him to justice. Thus far, it hasn’t happened, but people can still donate to Invisible Children in order to restore order in Uganda and give them the upbringing they deserve.
I feel the Invisible Children organization has bhougrt about an amazing amount of awareness throughout the United States and the world. It’s raised a lot of money but now it’s the government’s job to create and follow through with a plan to capture Kony. At the end of 2008, Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo launched a joint offensive against the LRA called Operation Lightning Thunder, with support from 17 U.S. military advisers. The operation failed because the LRA got advance warning of a bombing raid meant to kick off the campaign and bad weather stopped the operation. If the United States and other countries really wanted to stop Kony, they need to think of a better plan before risking more people’s lives and putting others in danger. The question is also up in the air whether to kill Kony or just to capture him. I believe it would do more to capture him so he could tell us all who he was working with and punish those people too. As we speak children are dying, and the LRA is splitting up making it even more difficult for us to find them, and some people are still arguing over what the Invisible Children organization is doing with the money. We need to stop planning and start doing.