stopping joseph kony

This video has gone viral overnight. If you haven't seen it, well, here it is.

KONY 2012.

It's been put out by Invisible Children, in an effort to raise worldwide awareness about Joseph Kony. Joseph Kony is a horrible horrible person. Joseph Kony is the leader of the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) and has abducted thousands of children from their homes and forced them into either child soldiery or sex slavery. Children are often forced to kill their own parents, so that they have no homes to return to. Joseph Kony is either completely insane, or perhaps worse, knows exactly what he is doing and is just some kind of heinous monster. Joseph Kony needs to be stopped.

Child soldiery. I remember watching this movie back in 2010, and crying my eyes out. I felt so helpless and so distraught. Even though the Salvadorean Civil War took place years ago, I knew that child soldiery is still rampant today, and it just broke my heart. I wanted to do something so badly. It's hard to do something by yourself. It's an emotional topic. It's why the KONY 2012 video is so popular. And not going to lie, I teared up a bit while watching the video too. It's really hard to see people in pain. And these children--the victims-- are most definitely in pain.

However, I think that it's really easy to jump on the bandwagon before you really look at what you're supporting. I do support and respect the efforts of Invisible Children to raise awareness about Joseph Kony.  I definitely think that the world needs to know about him. People in general should be aware of what's going on in the world around them. Ignorance is not bliss, and I'm a firm believer that ignorance does not give you a lack of responsibility to your fellowmen/women. And in this respect, KONY 2012 has been a huge success--the world now knows about the existence of one of the most miserable human beings to ever grace the planet.

I remain skeptical about the rest of it. It's easy to get caught up in all the fiery rhetoric (i.e. Save the Children!), without actually thinking through the solution. Because here's the thing. There is no easy solution.

Grant Oysten, a polisci student in Canada, references some of the problems in his tumblr (http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/). While I don't agree with everything that Grant says, I found it very interesting.

First of all, I'm skeptical of the organization. Invisible Children is supported in part by private donations--donations that were given to stop child soldiery. As a non-profit organization, their finances are available online (you can check for yourself at CharityNavigator). I found it a little shocking that the filmmaker of this film gets paid $90,000 a year. The three ranking executives also get paid $88,241, $89, 669, and $84,377. That's outside of equipment, film production, and travel expenses. Furthermore, while their main goal is advocacy (primarily film-making), apparently only 32% went to direct services. They also have refused to cooperate with the Better Business Bureau as well as refused to have their finances externally audited. Although I am sure that they have done a tremendous amount of good, their lack of fiscal transparency makes me rather hesitant to support them. If I made a donation to help child soldiery, I would have wanted it to go directly to helping victims, and I'm not 100% sure that's what would happen.

Secondly, direct military intervention (supported by Invisible Children) would be extremely complicated. Grant mentions that "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." I don't know what the right way to deal with this is. I just think that a lot of people haven't thought this through. Are we prepared to take down some children for the greater good of all children? It's a moral paradox. Could you do it? I don't think I could.

Speaking of direct military intervention, I found Grant's point on the idea of "rescuing" or "saving" Africa as reeking of the concept of "White Man's Burden" very interesting. In terms of development, White Man's Burden is anathema to me. I hate this idea of "We the West are going to save Africa." I strongly disagree with SAPs (structural adjustment programs) and some other policies of the IMF and the World Bank. Sustainable development has to come from the people, hence why I do support bottom-up development and the human capability (as opposed to human capital) approach.

However, in terms of human rights violations, I'm not sure yet where I stand. I just did research recently for a paper on U.S. policy and genocide, and I argued that although the U.S. should try to work through the UN, that we (along with every other nation) bear the R2P (responsibility to protect) and should intervene militarily in instances of genocide, should the UN fail to act. However, I argued that knowing fully that military intervention bears some pretty heavy consequences, including accusations of military interventionism (when the world is already suspicious of the U.S. because of Iraq and Afghanistan), and thus increased volatility in its role in world politics. Perhaps you could argue that the world would support our actions, and perhaps you are right. But is the U.S. ready to take on the role? The U.S. either entirely ignored (or waited until it was too late to respond effectively) counts of genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Armenia, Cambodia, and Sudan. Two main reasons were politicians not wanting to expend political capital  and cost.

It can't be assumed that catching Kony will be easy. Direct military intervention is almost always costly. Many of the same people who are advocating action by posting this video to their wall are the same people who bemoan the national debt deficit. Do they care enough to increase that same debt deficit? Do they care enough to face the possibility of starting another "war" (i.e. like the search for Bin Laden)? Because unless we all do, the likelihood of direct military intervention passing on Capitol Hill doesn't look likely. And perhaps this is where the video will actually cause change.

One could argue that Invisible Children supports the Ugandan Army, who have fought against the LRA. So maybe direct military intervention isn't necessary--the U.S. could simply provide support to the Ugandan Army. However, the Ugandan Army has also been accused of looting and rape. Do we really want to support that?  It's a moral paradox, and what's more, we've faced it before. African dictators have used peacekeeping missions to draw attention away from their own crimes against humanity through making themselves invaluable to major powers. For example, although Sani Abacha (dictator of Nigeria from 1993-98) committed numerous human rights violations, the U.S. had to take very cautionary action against him as they needed Nigerian troops to continue serving as peacekeepers in Liberia. A similar situation could be extremely compromising, especially in this case.

In short, I don't know what to do. I don't have any answers.

I am grateful for KONY 2012 if only because it has raised awareness of the issue. I agree wholeheartedly that something should be done. However, I think that the video would be even more helpful and life-changing if it awoke a dialogue on what should be done rather than hundreds of thousands of people just jumping on the Invisible Children bandwagon, and leaving it at that. These problems are extremely real, but they are also extremely complex--and I think that we have a responsibility to thoroughly research the problem and potential solutions before we advocate any kind of action.

In the words of Grant, "Let's keep it about Joseph Kony, not just about KONY 2012."