Tag Archives: Joseph Kony

Returning from the LRA

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“The international community appears to be more interested in the infamous Kony and his LRA outfit than in their many victims in CAR and other countries in the region. The LRA threat will hopefully diminish and eventually disappear – with Kony and other LRA leaders brought to justice – but the victims will remain.” – Godfrey Byaruhanga, Amnesty International Central Africa Researcher in a 2012 report.

It is believed that in the coming months the numbers of those leaving the LRA will steadily increase. It is time to look at some of the challenges that come with reintegrating into society.

Recently, Invisible Children sent out an update to its subscribers with the following headline “Top LRA commander killed in combat.” Finding news sources that confirm this was an unexpectedly difficult task. However, not because it is not true, but because in large the media seems to take little interest in this recent development as our television screens focus on efforts to regain control in Mali.

A Ugandan newspaper does report on the death of Binani – according to them “Kony’s chief bodyguard.” While that sounds essentially different from “Top LRA commander”, it is clear that Binani had been at the centre of LRA structure. The source further reports that in the last 6 months, 200 women and children had been freed from the LRA. In addition, the hopes are high that the death of the commander will lead to more people leaving the LRA.

With this in mind, we want to delve a little into some aspects of the process of reintegration into society of those that had been abducted, because the story does not end when they return home…

The 2000 Amnesty Act and “Justice”

While the LRA is now mostly in the Central African Republic (CAR), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it is still worthwhile to look at Ugandan legislation, because many of the rebels have been abducted within Uganda as children.

“Amnesty” means a pardon, forgiveness, exemption or discharge from criminal prosecution or any other form of punishment by the State” – Ugandan Amnesty Act, 2000

In an effort to end the atrocities, the Ugandan government enacted Amnesty in 2000. This basically meant that any LRA rebel would be forgiven by the State, so long as they turned themselves in and renounced rebellion. The idea behind this was that if the rebels knew that they had no punishment to fear, they would return to society. So Amnesty was supposed to bring peace.

And it proved successful. This statement by the Enough Project laments that the Act has not been renewed after it expired in May 2012. Roughly 26,000 rebels from over 25 different armed groups had received the Certificate of Amnesty.

But as things usually go there is a ‘however’… Many Ugandans were not satisfied with the Amnesty Act. Grace Acan, who had talked about this matter at an event in the Liu Institute in UBC Vancouver, has denied the government’s amnesty offer. As a former LRA abductee, she finds that it is not her that needs to be granted forgiveness, but the government, for failing to protect her and many others who were then children.

The UN has also released a report on the impacts of the Amnesty Act. While recognizing a state’s sovereign right to grant amnesty, they are critical of the long-term impacts of such a policy. “Experience has shown that a culture of impunity and a legacy of past crimes that go unaddressed are likely to undermine a lasting peace.”

Reintegration into the military

After having been pardoned by the government, some former LRA members choose to become part of the army and help track down those who used to be their comrades, as the UN organization IRIN reports. This may sound like a good plan from a military perspective, but there are grave concerns with this strategy. The above article points out the negative effect this can have on LRA victims. It specifically mentions a woman that recognizes the man who raped her among those that had been pardoned.

The role of the International Criminal Court

It is not just Ugandan law that has failed to provide the justice that people seek – some regard the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as even more controversial.

The ICC has indicted 5 of the LRA’s top commanders (the first indictments ever of this organization). Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo are all on the list (Raska Lukwiya deceased in 2006). These indictments were a wake-up call to the international community and raised hopes locally that the problem could soon come to an end.

Of course things are more complicated than that…

The ICC decisions made the LRA less willing to have peace talks. It was more difficult to bring the LRA to the negotiation table, since they had little incentive to leave their hiding places. This has attracted critiques, stating that the ICC indictments would interfere with local efforts. Indeed, the ICC contradicts the Amnesty efforts of the Ugandan government. On the other hand, as we saw earlier, that system is also problematic. There is also the argument that the LRA had more than enough time to come to a peace agreement and chose not to.

While institutions struggle to find a way to bring justice, civil society fights for reconciliation.

Civilian Efforts

Regardless of the justice system, those who return from the LRA or other armed groups often face other challenges or strong stigmas upon returning home. Many grassroots and civilian organizations have formed. We would like to highlight one group who we are partnering with.

The Women’s Advocacy Network (WAN)

The WAN is a local grassroots organization composed of several advocacy groups in Uganda. These women support each other in many ways: together they raise the money for their children’s school fees, they approach the government with a unified voice and they support each other with everyday challenges of post-conflict northern Uganda.

Being in a network of others that have had same or similar experiences has helped many of the women to process their time in the LRA. Many of them also face the same daily challenges – such as illiteracy, if they were abducted before receiving an education.

In the end justice remains a vague and difficult concept. The international community and the Ugandan government have been contradictory in their approaches. However, more recent developments show that joint efforts are on their way.

And as the Women’s Advocacy Network initiative (and many others) shows, there is progress. And there is hope.

Invisible Children’s Kony Sequel: New voices, same story

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KONY 2012: Part II  - Beyond Famous, is Invisible Children’s sequel to the first viral video that took the media world by storm. Uploaded last week, the video opens with a montage of media voices, at turns commenting on and criticizing the video’s predecessor, KONY 2012.

After the montage, former Ugandan presidential candidate, Norbert Mao, proclaims:

“Let those who are professors write their books and create academic awareness. But this one grabs you by your gut, and shakes you, until you are forced to pay attention. That is the essence of awareness. People are now paying attention.”

But are they? And what are they paying attention to?

With a little over 1.6 million views, the sequel to KONY 2012 has far fewer views than the original, which is likely a result of the adverse reactions Invisible Children received for the original video, the organization and its leadership – particularly one the group’s founders, Jason Russell.

The sequel also lacks the immediate qualities that made the original so easily accessible. By presenting the complex issue through a child’s eyes, the world paid attention, despite the video’s dangerous foray into oversimplification.

That said, there are efforts to improve upon the original’s mistakes. Most notably, the sequel seems to address the criticism the original received for not being representative of countries currently affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Part II picks up on this and includes many voices from current LRA affected areas such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

As a response to the criticism of KONY2012’s tones of neocolonialism and depictions of the ‘white savior complex’, Part II is mindful of including activists and volunteers from different racial groups.

Invisible Children CEO Ben Keesey, the new voice of the movement, partially side-steps the original video’s sole emphasis on military intervention. He emphasizes the fact that both reconstruction and development have to be part of any solution in the areas affected by the LRA. Along with rehabilitation and reconstruction, the video includes civilian protection, peaceful surrender and arrest of LRA leadership as part of the comprehensive solution. How these ideals are to be achieved however, is still not fully explained, leading the public to believe that it will all be deceptively simple. A quote from the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court illustrates this:

“I am dealing with the state parties and the international community. There is no legal obstacle. Go and arrest Kony tomorrow. It’s perfect.” – Luis Moreno Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the ICC

In the interest of sustaining this implication of a simple solution, many aspects of the conflict are carefully avoided. The risk that military intervention might further aggravate more violence, the details behind the Ugandan government and military’s human rights violations, the backlash in Uganda caused by the original video, and further context into the LRA’s history in the currently affected countries are not mentioned at all.

Instead, the video’s focus is mostly on the organization’s worldwide advocacy event, aimed in engaging the social media savvy youth in April 20th’s “Cover the Night.”

On the 20th, many eyes will be turned to hundreds of thousand of posters of Joseph Kony’s face. The hope is that people continue to dig even deeper than sequels and continue to engage in advocating for an end to a conflict that continues to affect many lives. The hope is that the momentary world-wide attention on April 21st (and 22nd, and 23rd…) does not flutter away faster than the posters on the streets and the red chalk on the walls.

Finding the Good in Kony 2012

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Now that the dust has settled from the social media phenomenon that was Kony, we thought we’d take a moment to parse out the positives.

This is how this post was supposed to start.  Obviously, there have been a few minor developments.

Nevertheless, our intentions for this post remain the same.  We are not going to comment on Jason Russell and his personal life.  For ACAC, there are a few points to be made about the original media firestorm that was Kony, and it would be a shame not to share them, especially since these points pertain the positive aspects of the campaign and the incredible amount of attention it garnered. This, we feel, is more important. So please, allow us to proceed as scheduled….

When we posted last week Kony 2012 had over 72 million views on YouTube.  Today it tops 82 million. There is no denying that in terms of sheer reach, this campaign was an incredible success. For a North American NGO involved in work in Central Africa, this kind of recognition is almost unfathomable. And Invisible Children achieved it. There are likely a variety of factors that led to the astonishing extent to which this video went viral – everything from the production values (sexy graphics, well-crafted montages, music, etc.) and the ‘cute factor’ (Gavin) to the day of the week and time it was released, when audiences weren’t as distracted by other things (also known as a “slow news day”). We may never know for sure exactly why it was this video. But for many who viewed it, it was the first time they had heard about the Lord’s Resistance Army and any kind of history, no matter how over-simplified, of Uganda.

Friends and family members of the ACAC team support our research and advocacy interests in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, but may not necessarily engage with these issues in the same way.  For this reason, when Kony 2012 went viral, many of us were pulled into the conversation, sometimes by people with which we had never engaged in such conversations before.  “Did you see this?” some friends asked, when they posted the link on our Facebook walls.  “Thought you might be into this,” said others, in tweets with the video and the hashtag #stopkony.

These exchanges provided opportunities for all of us to discuss something that is at the heart of ACAC’s mandate: ethical advocacy. This commitment drives much of our work, whether it’s planning an event, writing policy, or even designing a poster. We don’t always get it right. In no means is Invisible Children a “failure” to measure against our “success.” Ethical advocacy is a process, and those who aim to engage in it must constantly re-evaluate their decisions, question norms and interrogate assumptions (and this includes us). There is no one, “right” way to fully represent an issue, let alone a decades-long conflict involving things as complex as child soldiers and the LRA. Representations are inevitably partial, but as we argued in our last post, some are better than others.

Kony 2012 provided a litany of opportunities for people interested in engaging in meaningful, productive conversations – conversations about justice and its varying definitions, about the importance of locally-driven peace initiatives, about the complexity of conflict in the Great Lakes region of Africa, and especially, about what people outside of the area can do really do about it. We only hope this is the beginning of a dialogue that will continue well into the future, whether or not we ever see a Kony 2.0. As a conversation starter, Kony 2012 was invaluable.

Of course, while we were busy having one-on-ones with those eager to engage on the topic, hundreds of incredibly articulate people were quick to blog and vlog about the issue. Just as soon as Kony was a part of our collective consciousness, so too were the responses. Perhaps one of the best things to emerge from this situation is the knowledge that when an organization presents a picture some deem problematic, there exists a strong collection of voices unafraid to weigh in (and get noticed for doing so!). While many shared the original video and quickly moved on, others shared, saw critiques, and then posted those too.  Some of us could literally track minds changing and thinking emerging on our newsfeeds. If Kony 2012 and the discussions that surrounded it represent the future – a fervency with which we will dialogue about advocacy, international development, foreign affairs and policy – then count us in.

Speaking of which, no one’s enthusiasm throughout all of this compared to that of the people who made this video viral – the collective 80 million. It is not productive to cast judgment on those who shared with good intentions. What matters is that millions of people across the globe were catalyzed into action about something they saw as unjust. This is a good thing! And if this is you, please, do not let Kony 2012 leave a sour taste in your mouth. Critiques of Kony are not judgments of your character, and they certainly are not meant to weaken your resolve. They serve only as a reminder that, no matter what the cause, we must continually ask how we situate ourselves relative to those who appear to need “helping,” and what the best way to really “help” might be.  Be open to new approaches you might not have considered, or things that might not be familiar to you. Be open to lending support to solutions already in place, instead of imposing your (“our”) own. And most of all, be open to the fact that maybe what a peoples or a community really needs, isn’t your help at all.

Keep reading. Keep talking. Keep thinking.

To wrap up the Kony chapter here at the ACAC blog, we willl end with an updated round-up of responses.*  Some are scathing, some satirical, some poignant. Not all are a direct critique. Read and watch and your leisure.

*Those responses previously posted in our first appear at the end of this list.

Al Jazeera English: Kony screening angers Ugandans

Rap News 12: Yes We Kony

AlterNet: Invisible Children funded by anti-gay religious right by B.E. Wilson

Canadian International Council: #Ugandans2012 by Erin Baines

Julie Okot Bitek’s interview with the F-Word radio show.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: “My Little Kony”

African Youth Initiative Network: African War victim’s opinion on Kony by Victor Ochen

World Peace Foundation: Don’t elevate Kony by Alex Dewaal

Acholi Times: Kony 2012 should have advocated dialogue by Sam Olara

Acholi Times: Open letter to Jason Russell by Amber Ha

The Sky is Yellow: Missing perspective – Children born into the LRA by Beth Stewart

CNN: How not the change the world by Mareike Schomerus

Invisible Children: Thank you KONY 2012 supporters

The Atlantic: Solving War Crimes with Wristbands: The Arrogance of ‘KONY 2012’ by Kate Cronin-Furman & Amanda Taub (of Wronging Rights)

The Daily What: Kony Series

The Independent: Stop Kony, yes. But don’t stop asking questions by Musa Okwonga

Free the Children: Our thoughts on Kony 2012

The Guardian: Kony 2012: what’s the real story? by Polly Curtis and Tom McCarthy

Invisible Children: Official response to criticism

Think Africa: #Kony2012: An LRA Survivor’s Tale by Charles Okwir

Salon: Uganda’s outrage over Kony 2012 by Jocelyn Edwards

The NY Times: Viral Video, Vicious Warlord by Nicholas Kristof

The Huffington Post: Westerners are not and will never be the ‘saviors’ of Africa by Ben Affleck

The Huffington Post: From Caring to Doing: The responsibility by of experts for #stopkony by Stephanie Rudat

Naked Chiefs: Kony Series by Charles Onyango-Obbo

Unmuted: You Don’t Have My Vote

From our first Kony blog post:

Julie Okot Bitek – Commercializing Children’s Suffering is Macabre. Julie Bitek examines how the voices of the Acholi people/Northern Ugandans have been excluded from Western advocacy campaigns about Northern Uganda./

Targets or Captives? Obama’s LRA Challenge – What might be some of the unintended consequences of the military solution/military advisers which Invisible Children is advocating for? Prof. Erin Baines explores this issue.

What Does Kony Want? – A Photo Essay by Prof. Erin Baines.

Kony 2012 – Why I Love the idea but hate the campaign.

Taking Kony 2012 Down a Notch – Max Kersten from Justice in Conflict appeals for sober second thought.

Securing Rights – Let’s Talk About Kony. A valuable discussion by Daniel Solomon on the questions of morality, public narratives, and organizing narratives surrounding the Kony 2012 campaign.

Selling Old Newspapers Shouldn’t Be Profitable – Invisible Children and Kony 2012. A reminder that the LRA is largely no longer in Uganda, and focusing on Uganda as if the LRA were there now may not be entirely accurate.

Chris Blattman – What you should be reading if you want to understand the US and the Lord’s Resistance Army.

The Visible Problem with Invisible Children. A lengthy discussion on the problems with Invisible Children’s approach and their framing of the issues.

KONY 2012: Thinking beyond the campaign. A critical perspective coming from a Canadian youth magazine.

Foreign Affairs- Obama Takes on the LRA. A well thought piece from Mareike Schomerus, Tim Allen, and Kloen Vlassenroot looking at some of the political calculations behind Obama’s commitment to supporting the Ugandan army/UPDF in their hunt for Joseph Kony.

How Matters – Good guys, Bad guys, and the People in between.  Another considerate piece, which has a valuable discussion about the ethics of using Jacob’s suffering in the film.

 

7 Days of Sober Thought after Kony 2012: Part II

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This entry is the second installment in a series we began with this post: 7 Days of Sober Thought after Kony 2012: Part I.

These posts are meant to expand on the critiques already penned by many authors online, as well as add a few points of our own. Picking up where we left off…..

Issue: Misrepresentation

Critics say the Kony 2012 video misrepresents (or misrepresents, by omission) some key facts.  These include:

-       the currency of the conflict;

-       the human rights record of the Ugandan army (the Ugandan People’s Defense Force or UPDF), ‘glossed over’ in the expressed support the United States’ partnership with this group in the attempt to capture Kony; and

-        the claim that “no one cared” about bringing Kony and the LRA to justice and the complete omission of local peace processes that have been ongoing for years.

Sample critique:  This video by Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire.

Our Response

To their credit, Invisible Children lays out clearly in the video how the LRA have migrated in parts of the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  In September of last year Invisible Children and Resolve launched their LRA tracker, which records the movements and actions of the LRA throughout Central Africa.  It is an incredible tool, to be sure.

All of that said, critics (such as “slubogo,” whose YouTube video you can see here) are right to point out that the message that Joseph Kony and the LRA are no longer in Uganda is largely overshadowed by the tone of the rest of the video, which insinuates a sense of urgency and conflict in northern Uganda, which in fact has been in a relative state of peace for years.

As for the misrepresentation of other armed groups: The Ugandan army, or UDPF, has been depicted in the Kony 2012 video as a reliable partner to the U.S. 100-person special forces team to help lead the search for Joseph Kony.  The LRA, meanwhile is depicted as the source of all the violence in Northern Uganda – the “bad guys,” remember – and the rogue rebel army wreaking havoc in this otherwise peaceful nation.  Invisible Children is by no means the first organization to engage in this kind of binary representation.  The reality is far more complex.  First, a variety of offshoot armed groups have historically engaged in violence in Uganda, and throughout other parts of the Great Lakes region.  While some have been dismantled, the survivors of their violent crimes against are testament to the fact for a long time, the LRA wasn’t the only gang in town.

Second, the state-run army has itself committed atrocious crimes against the Ugandan people, with impunity (as one source, see Human Rights Watch’s report on Uganda – Uprooted and Forgotten).

A U.S.-run campaign in which American troops ‘partner’ with members of the UPDF to bring the LRA to justice ignores the UPDF’s own violent history and oppressive relationship with the Acholi people of Uganda.  Where would justice be for them?

The October, 2011 deployment of 100 troops to Uganda is not the first time the U.S. has sponsored the LRA disarmament project. Resolve describes Operation Lightning Thunder, which took place in 2008, this way:

“On December 14, 2008, two weeks after the last meeting between Kony and peace negotiators, the Uganda military launched an offensive against the LRA’s bases in DR Congo’s Garamba National Park. Dubbed “Operation Lightning Thunder,” the poorly planned offensive failed to surprise the elusive rebel leaders, who responded by ordering massive reprisal attacks on civilians in vulnerable areas of the DR Congo and Sudan. The US provided significant financial, logistical and diplomatic support for the operation, despite the failure of the military planners to include a coordinated strategy to protect civilians from predictable LRA reprisal attacks, a tactic the LRA had used in response to past offensives by military forces.

“Just days after the launch of Operation Lightning Thunder the LRA carried out a series of coordinated massacres specifically targeting gatherings of Congolese civilians gathered at their places of worship. Over 865 civilians were killed in these attacks, one of the worst massacres of the war.”

Clearly any campaign to seize a warlord goes well beyond a simple seek-and-destroy or seek-and-capture mission. Moreover, as illustrated by history, the consequences of this ill-thought approach cannot be underestimated; what’s at risk is literally people’s lives. In 2008 almost 900 of them were taken in a massacre survivors will not soon forget. In an attempt to bring a murderer who has terrorized communities to justice we must not ourselves engaged in murder and terror.

To be fair, Invisible Children did address the human rights record of the U.S. government in their response, which they issued shortly after the backlash to their video. Here’s what they had to say:

“We do not defend any of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Ugandan army (UPDF). None of the money donated through Invisible Children ever goes to the government of Uganda or any other government. Yet the only feasible and proper way to stop Kony and protect the civilians he targets is to coordinate efforts with regional governments.”

Good to know.  What we don’t see in this statement, however, is any reference to the Ugandan army – a different body altogether than the Ugandan government.  The question of Invisible Children’s support of a U.S.-Ugandan military partnership and the problems therein remained unanswered at this point.

For the majority of ACAC’s members, one of the most bothersome parts of the Kony 2012 video was hearing International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo lament that “Kony was committing crimes for 20 years and no one cared.”  Again, to be fair to Invisible Children, this is not their statement, but that of a key figure at the ICC.  Nevertheless, it was used in the video, in a way that can only be interpreted as an endorsement of Moreno-Ocampo’s sentiments.  As has been expressed in several incredibly articulate blog and vlog posts responding to Kony 2012, this claim dismisses outright the work of Ugandan people who have been actively engaged in peace and justice processes for decades.

The Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI) is but one example. This group is an interfaith peace building and conflict transformation organization formed in 1997 as a proactive response to the conflict in Northern Uganda.  This group aims to heal communities touched by conflict through mediation and dialogue, training in peacebuilding, community peace prayers, and cross border healing workshops.

The Justice and Reconciliation Project is another.  Based in Gulu, northern Uganda, this project has played a key role in transitional justice in Uganda since 2005 through seeking to understand and explain the interests, needs, concerns and views of communities affected by conflict. It aims to promote sustainable peace through the active involvement of war-affected communities in research and advocacy. In addition, this group seeks to provide tools to empower other victims and survivors of conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region also in situations of conflict.

These are just two examples of local projects that have long been committed – and remain committed – to restoring peace and facilitating healing in Northern Uganda.  It is integral to recognize, as these two examples illustrate, the extent to which faith and spirituality factor into some Ugandan’s conceptualization of peace and healing, and the role transitional justice has played in achieving this.  Clearly an American conception of ‘justice’ – one in which “bad guys” are captured, put on trial, and sentenced (to time in jail or death) – is not the only way justice can be imagined, and certainly not the way that has been embraced by most Ugandans.  Crimes against and within communities require community-based solutions.

Another group whose work falls into the category of community based coalition-building and advocacy is the Women’s Advocacy Network, or WAN.  Tanja Bergen will tell you more about WAN in upcoming posts, so stay tuned.

To this we add:

In response to critics’ claims that Invisible Children over-simplifies and omits key information in its video, it has issued this statement:

“In our quest to garner wide public support of nuanced policy, Invisible Children has sought to explain the conflict in an easily understandable format, focusing on the core attributes of LRA leadership that infringe upon the most basic of human rights. In a 30-minute film, however, many nuances of the 26-year conflict are admittedly lost or overlooked. The film is a first entry point to this conflict for many, and the organization provides several ways for our supporters to go deeper in learning about the make-up of the LRA and the history of the conflict. Likewise, our work on the ground continually adapts to the changing complexities of the conflict.” (Links their own).

The complexity of something like the LRA and its crimes throughout Central Africa over the course of almost three decades is certainly difficult to capture in a short film.  That said, at 30 minutes, Kony 2012 is probably one of the longest videos ever to go viral on YouTube.  Plenty of screen time is also taken up by characters like the director’s son, Gavin, and shots of his life in and family in the United States. It is certainly a valid critique to ask whether more time could have been spent elucidating some of the more complex aspects of the LRA and Uganda’s recent history.

Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University’s School of Law, has written extensively on Uganda, with topics ranging what he describes as “social torture”  to male sexual violence. In 2008 he released a 44-minute video entitled Gender Against Men, in which he outlines the extent of sexual violence committed against men in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. You can watch this video here.

Yes, it is 14 minutes longer than Kony 2012, and yes, its purpose is quite different from that of Invisible Children – the video is documentary in style, and therefore primarily educational, while Kony 2012 is clearly a part of a campaign meant to inspire specific actions (buying ‘action kits,’ lobbying celebrities and politicans, and so on).  All of this said, members of ACAC have expressed great appreciation for Dolan’s project, in that he succeeds in many ways at capturing a very complex, not to mention delicate, topic, in a 44-minute-long film.  It is difficult, and it may not always lend easily to montages and appealing modern graphics, but it can be done.

Coming up next: our last entry on Kony 2012, complete with an updated round-up of responses and a comment on the positive take-aways from this campaign.