How to Help African Children At Risk
Constructive Activism beyond “KONY 2012”
Article Summary and Author Biography
The success of the "KONY 2012" video shows the vast reserves of idealism and concern out there. Here is how to turn that concern into useful action.
ANNE C. RICHARD is vice president of government relations and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee.
Snapshot
Americans should not have been surprised by Obama's recent announcement that he would send a small number of troops to Uganda. This is only the latest chapter in a feeble, decades-long U.S. attempt to take out Joseph Kony and his militia.
Snapshot
With more than 70 million views, KONY 2012 has achieved its aim of reaching a mass audience. But the film is a quintessentially American fable printed on an African canvas, one that will turn out to be a brief diversion, just a bit of Internet chatter.
A child in a Congolese refugee camp. (babasteve / flickr)
Thanks to the "KONY 2012" video made by the San Diego-based organization Invisible Children, millions of people are suddenly interested in humanitarian crises in Central Africa. This is great news, but the challenge now is to translate that concern into constructive activism.
Joseph Kony has led the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) since the mid-1980s. He created it from the remnants of a quasi-Christian movement led by the mystic and spiritual leader Alice Auma; its early followers opposed the marginalization of the Acholi people in northern Uganda by the government of Yoweri Museveni. At times the LRA was supported by the government of neighboring Sudan, as retaliation for Museveni's support of rebels there.
From 1987 to 2006, the LRA attacked and murdered civilians in northern Uganda. More than two million people were uprooted from their homes and most ended up living in camps that lacked food, clean water, and sanitation. Over the course of the conflict, tens of thousands of children were abducted and turned into soldiers, porters, cooks, laundresses, or sex slaves. Many were killed or forced to harm or kill others, including their own relatives. Some eventually escaped.
To protect their children from abduction by the LRA, parents in the countryside often sent them to sleep in the relative safety of nearby towns. Every night, children could be seen walking into towns. Hundreds of these "night commuters" would march for miles before bedding down in schools or churches or under storefront awnings. Community leaders and aid workers tried to protect them, not just from abduction but also from other threats such as harassment, exploitation, and rape. The phenomenon was only one among many tragic symptoms of a shattered society...
