KONY 2012: ADVOCATES VS CRITICS

The Kony 2012 documentary and movement has absolutely swept the western world. The Kony 2012 film was posted by an activist organisation called the Invisible Children on March 5th and was viewed by over 25 Million people across the globe in under 48 hours. The tag #stopkony is trending world wide on twitter and celebrities Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Oprah, Ryan Seacrest, and many more have all declared their support to the cause.

If you haven't heard of Joseph Kony, don't worry, neither had most people until the YouTube clip appeared on their Facebook or twitter this week. To summarise, the documentary is a call to the public to make a warlord -Joseph Kony- famous. Joseph Kony is the leader of a guerrilla group in Central Africa named the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA. The LRA are a militant group known for brutal crimes against civilians including murder, rape, mutilations, and torture. Kony and the LRA are accused of abducting over 30,000 children from northern Uganda. The Invisible Children wrote the following:

Joseph Kony’s tactics were—and remain—brutal. He often forced children to kill their parents or siblings with machetes or blunt tools. He abducted girls to be sex slaves for his officers. He brainwashed and indoctrinated the children with his lies and manipulated them with his claim of spiritual powers. (source)

Most of the LRA's leaders have never been held accountable for their crimes, though some efforts are going into bringing them to justice. Kony and two of his key commanders are currently wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Kony himself
has 33 charges, 12 counts of crimes against humanity and 21 counts of war crimes.

Clearly Kony and the LRA need to be apprehended, but what is interesting is why, when the LRA have been committing these atrocities for 26 years, does the Kony campaign now have so much traction and public support? Obviously the documentary ignited a lot of passion for the cause. With it's powerful images, emotive music, and interviews of blonde toddlers, how could it not? But the bulk of the credit has to go to social media. The twitter trends are covered with Kony 2012, Facebook friends have been non-stop sharing the film and creating events to "cover the night", and YouTube first hosted the documentary with 300,000 comments on the clip to date. It created such a fan fair on the interwebs that it even hit TV news. Co-founder of Invisible Children Inc. and director of the Kony 2012 film Jason Russell has been doing interview after interview on TV to not only raise more awareness but to defend his organisation.

When it comes to charity, especially high profile charities like the Invisible Children Inc., there are always going to be critics and skeptics. These are the top 5 criticisms:

1. The Kony 2012 campaign is a simplistic approach to solving a complex issue.
   Scholars and policy makers have laboured over trying to solve the problems in Africa for decades. Sharing a video and raising money for more awareness is doing nothing to actually reduce the conflict.
2. The Kony 2012 campaign is misleading.
   The documentary failed to show that Kony hadn't been in Uganda for up to 6 years. Also, the LRA has dwindled over the years to just a couple of hundred. Kony is already on his last legs.
3. Invisible Children work closely with the Ugandan Army in planning to bring down Kony.
   The army of Uganda have been implicated in their own human rights violations including rape and the murder of civilians. Working with them only encourages what they do.
4. Charity Navigator, the top charity evaluator in the US, gave Invisible Children just 2 out of 4 stars for accountability and transparency.
5. Invisible Children only used 37% of the money raised to help people on the ground in Uganda. Most of it should have gone to the people in the most need.

Invisible Children address the critique on their website and maintain that what they are doing and working toward is of fundamental value to the world. They released their annual financial report and their breakdown of expenses is particularly interesting. It shows that they spend most of their funds on Central African programs (37%) like the legacy scholarship program and rehabilitation centre. A large bulk of funds also goes towards awareness programs in the western world (26%). Jason Russell addressed this in an interview on the Today show.

"We believe in the power of educating the western world...It's hard for people to understand how you can both educate the western world while you're educating and rehabilitating war-torn children...We split the money into both our advocacy and awareness [programs] and it is also going into our rehabilitation programs." (source)

At the end of the day, whether you believe in the Invisible Children or not as an organisation, it is undeniable that their documentary has brought to light the incredible power of the internet and of social media. People are now aware of the difference they can make just by pressing a 'share' button. One day we will look back on this Kony 2012 campaign and see that this is when the evolution of social networking began and the power of the internet was fully realised.