Almost nine months after the release of KONY 2012, Joseph Kony is a distant memory for most of the original 100+ million viewers of the historic viral video. The creators of the video, Invisible Children (IC), accomplished a great deal with KONY 2012 – millions of people were introduced to them (and Joseph Kony), they (and Joseph Kony) landed on the cover of TIME magazine, and the names “Invisible Children” (and “Joseph Kony”) entered into the global imaginary as actors in an international justice drama. But in order for Invisible Children to move forward with their larger organizational aims, the hangover from biting criticism after the release of the video needed to be resolved and IC’s founder Jason Russell’s dramatic psychological breakdown required explanation. To that end,MOVE –a video released by Invisible Children in mid-October – was produced to address IC’s critics head-on and to reassure their base of support that Jason has fully recovered and is ready to reassume his role of “head visionary” at Invisible Children.

In MOVE, Invisible Children answers the question: “What happened?” First, Jason explains his breakdown as a result of “PTSD” (post-traumatic stress syndrome) after being confronted with violent, gruesome northern Uganda war stories for over nine years. Furthermore, the pressures of mounting a huge youth social movement to help the children of Gulu exacerbated these psychological effects; while Invisible Children is a wildly successful social movement, the organization has thus far been unable to achieve their ultimate stated goal to capture Joseph Kony and end the war. These two factors coupled with being submerged by the “tsunami” of media attention (and the resulting severe sleep deprivation) after the release of KONY 2012, ultimately caused Jason’s breakdown. To this end, MOVE is effective – Jason Russell’s personal reputation is restored – one would have to be incredibly hard-hearted to not be touched by his sensitivity, honesty, and commitment as portrayed in this video.

Invisible Children then addresses the criticisms waged against the organization and KONY 2012 one-by-one. Why did Jason choose to explain a complex conflict to his young son as a method to “Make Kony Famous”? Jason argues this was a strategic move to get people to pay attention to the story. He explains, “If you just report the facts and the statistics of a war, people can’t relate…they turn it off.” In response to whether or not Invisible Children is a “scam,” another IC staff person explains that much of the confusion about the organization stemmed from weak infrastructural capacity – their website could not handle the unexpectedly large traffic caused by KONY 2012 (a reported 35,000 concurrent viewers). To handle the volume of web-traffic, Invisible Children set up a Tumblr account to buttress their website, but this site only provided a portion of the information located on the official Invisible Children website. Hence, they explain, KONY 2012 viewers were introduced to Invisible Children by a sketchy, incomplete website that made them look suspicious. As for the “propaganda” allegation, Invisible Children essentially does not touch that question; Chief Financial Officer Ben Keesey simply states that this allegation is “absolutely false.” As for the “slacktivism” accusation – it is hard to argue that Invisible Children consists of a bunch of “slackers” in any way, shape, or form. They revolutionized social activism using new media forms and organized the largest advocacy groups to walk on Washington DC for any African cause, including Darfur. Just a few weeks ago, on November 17^th, Invisible Children reportedly led 10,000 followers to Washington DC to lobby the US Government to act on the Kony case. Invisible Children is no joke – underestimate them at your peril.

As has been the case for most of Invisible Children’s existence – many allegations waged against them by casual observers are uninformed and oftentimes unfair. IC staff and volunteers spend their time doing things we wish all young people would do in America – that is, working tirelessly to “make the world a better place.” But this video, MOVE – like most of the media produced by Invisible Children – is also uninformed and unfair, especially to their “do-gooder” followers. First of all, the discussion about “the conflict,” “Joseph Kony,” or “the LRA” is completely dehistoricized and decontextualized in ways that I do not have space in this blog to fully articulate. (If you want to learn more about this, look at the website http://makingsenseofkony.org, the e-book Beyond Kony edited by Amanda Taub, or find other substantive books on the conflict here). But beyond the one-dimensional narratives in which Invisible Children specializes, MOVE unabashedly reveals what the organization cherishes more than anything – perhaps even more than the capture of Joseph Kony: they want to give young America a sense of purpose. Young Americans (or the “millenials”) are purportedly accused by adults of being lazy, self-absorbed, tech-savvy, over-confident, and “too busy trying to get noticed on FB or Twitter to accomplish anything of value.” IC’s Jeddidiah Jenkens states in another video that Invisible Children’s campaigns offer an opportunity to “prove the universal through the specific.” In other words, the specific case of conflict in northern Uganda, Joseph Kony, and the LRA is a vehicle through which Invisible Children can address a universal, i.e. a perceived sense of aimlessness, alienation, and disempowerment of American youth. Invisible Children aims to “change the mindset of Western young people to see…that they can do profoundly good things with their life.” One could argue that the ultimate goal of Invisible Children is not to capture Kony or to “End The War” itself – or even to “make the world a better place” – but rather to offer young Americans a one-way ticket out of their social ennui.

I have encountered this “giving American youth a sense of purpose” rhetoric consistently in my dealings with Invisible Children over the past six years, but I never understood the centrality of this part of their ideology until now. About a month ago, I visited Southern California to give a talk about KONY 2012 and I was invited to dinner by the Invisible Children club at UCLA. Just minutes into our conversation, the club members realized I was not a “fan” of KONY 2012 – but we still talked and listened to each other. I explained the history of the conflict, who benefits from the conflict (and KONY 2012), and how powerful entities are in a sense using the Invisible Children movement to justify military expansion and dictatorial powers in the region. Hearing the damning evidence about their organization, the faces of these young people dropped and they looked at me with blank, vacant stares – so I stopped at one point and asked, “Wait…you’ve never heard any of this before?” They shook their heads – they hadn’t. Towards the end of our conversation one of the students said, “Well, I’m probably going to stay involved in this…and probably will for the rest of my life because it’s changed my life, and I’ve seen how it’s changed other people’s lives as well.” I could not believe what I was hearing – she was completely focused on the benefits to her of being involved in this group, regardless of whatever geopolitical mess they as a group were stepping into. Being in Invisible Children gave her and others a reason for being, and perhaps a sense of community that they could not find elsewhere.

This reminded me of those first three young guys who started Invisible Children – Jason, Bobby, and Laren. In nine years, they spawned an incredibly impressive youth social movement and revolutionized how advocacy is done in the US – and they accomplished all of this in spite of an almost complete ignorance of the larger context of the conflict in northern Uganda. Now, with their “LRA Crisis Tracker” system in place, Invisible Children probably knows the nitty-gritty details of the whereabouts of the LRA and Joseph Kony better than anyone. And I assume they probably know the larger historical context more fully than they did when I met one of the founders in 2006. But Invisible Children still willingly turns its head away from acknowledging the role it plays in furthering the interests of powerful entities – political leaders wanting to secure or grab power, foreign military actors (like US-AFRICOM or the Ugandan government/military) that aim to expand deep into Africa where there are vast natural resources, or agents that promote ineffective, top-down, Western models of “international justice” like those prescribed by the International Criminal Court. The disquieting overall message of MOVE is that Invisible Children is so deeply invested in its mission to give young Americans a raison d’être, they are willing to meddle in a situation in which their actions will undoubtedly reinforce the structural conditions that cause war, poverty, and violence in the first place.

Original Source: Critical Investigations Into Humanitarianism in Africa

Ayesha Nibbe is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Hawaii Pacific University and Contributor of Making Sense of Kony.  Her work focuses generally on questions about poverty and hunger and how “the West” engages in a relationship with the rest of the world via development and humanitarianism.  Dr. Nibbe is currently producing a book manuscript on the socio-political effects of humanitarian aid in the context of the conflict in northern Uganda.  To conduct research for this book, she lived in northern Uganda for over two years in both Gulu town and Opit internal displacement (IDP) camp – starting when the war was in full-swing and ending in Peace Talks.

Abstract

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To Read the Full Text, Please Access the PDF Here:  PDF (ENGLISH) and select “Full Screen View”

Sverker Finnström is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Uppsala University. He is the author of Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda (2008) and co-editor of Virtual War and Magical Death: Technologies and Imaginaries for Terror and Killing (forthcom- ing). This essay is a preliminary report from a research project on global war and transnational (in)justice, funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

I’m inspired to be here with you today. Your presence sends a strong signal that people across the globe, especially young people, will not stand by and be silent as armed groups commit senseless atrocities and terrorize innocent communities. The results may not always be direct or immediate, but know this – your voices make a difference. As the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Great distances and different worldviews often divide us. However, particular events in history break down those barriers and connect us on a personal level, on a human level. They touch our sense of what is fundamentally right and wrong. The Lord’s Resistance Army is one such phenomenon. As President Obama said two years ago, the LRA’s actions are an affront to human dignity. Those abducted must be freed, those wounded must heal, and those responsible must be brought to justice.

Over the last several years, the people and Governments of Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan have worked to bring an end to the threat posed by the LRA. They have endured difficult circumstances and made sacrifices in search of peace. In coordination with the African Union, the United Nations, and other international partners, the United States has provided cross-cutting support to these regional efforts. We believe it is in our collective interest to help our African partners to strengthen their capacity to resolve conflicts and establish lasting security.

When it comes to the LRA, it is tempting to talk about a silver bullet or a ready-made solution. However, history has taught us that it is not that simple or straightforward. Anyone who has spent time in the remote areas where the LRA operates or studied the LRA over the years can testify to that. That is why we are pursuing a comprehensive approach, supporting both military and civilian efforts. Over the past year, the United States has deployed military advisors and increased our logistical support to regional military operations. At the same time, we have deployed civilian officers and expanded programs to promote defections from the LRA, establish communications networks, and empower affected communities.

Despite enormous challenges, the region is making progress in addressing this threat. The LRA has been weakened and pushed out of many areas. Hundreds of abductees have been rescued. There has not been a reported LRA attack in South Sudan for over a year. In May, the Ugandan military captured LRA senior commander Ceasar Acellam, long considered one of the LRA’s top five commanders. In August, the Ugandan military attacked the group led by senior LRA commander Dominic Ongwen, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, and seized their campsite.

Defections are also on the rise. Since Acellam’s capture, several mid-level officers have left the group. In the last month alone, more than 19 people have defected or escaped from the LRA. We are working with a range of partners in the region, including Invisible Children, to airdrop more leaflets, expand radio broadcasts, and establish safe reporting sites to encourage the remaining LRA to peacefully surrender from the group. We are also supporting communities in establishing new strategies and networks, incorporating High Frequency Radios, to increase their own security. And our delivery of humanitarian relief continues.

This is not to suggest that the situation is resolved or that Joseph Kony will be apprehended tomorrow. Communities remain vulnerable, the top fugitives remain at large, and the LRA continues to have a significant physical and psychological impact across multiple countries. Ending the LRA threat will require more effort, more time, and even a little bit of luck. But as we gather today, I think we can confidently say that we are moving in the right direction. We have come a long way over the last several years and with the support of international partners, the AU, UN, and NGOs, the region is moving closer to turning the page on this tragic chapter.

Achieving that ultimate goal of ending the LRA threat and establishing security will require the sustained resolve and collaboration of all those involved, beginning first and foremost with the governments in the region. Although CAR, the DRC, South Sudan, and Uganda may have their differences, they are bound together by a desire to protect their people from this regional threat. Their troops and their citizens are on the frontlines. Their continued partnership and leadership, more than anything else, will determine the success of this effort. We believe the African Union’s involvement can help to solidify that regional cooperation.

At the same time though, there are many other stakeholders who have critical roles to play. One of the remarkable things about this effort is that it has brought together an unusual, non-traditional coalition – involving UN peacekeepers and civil affairs officers, former abductees, community radio operators, religious leaders, local self-defense groups, aid workers, international diplomats, peace mediators, philanthropists, and not to forget, all of you here today. As we move forward, we must continue to strengthen this coalition and to grow it by reaching out to new groups and forging new partnerships.

The theme of your Summit is “move.” But when you think about it, just moving is not enough. It’s how and where you move that matters. And when we move together, we can have a resounding impact. That is what has made this regional effort, this movement, and this coalition so effective over the past several years, and that’s what is needed to sustain this progress.

So let’s keep moving together. If we continue to do so, I believe we’ll continue to move in the right direction toward a future free of the LRA, and ultimately a future where civilians are protected and such horrific abuses are deterred. Thank you for being here and for your commitment to this important work.

source: http://www.state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/2012/200866.htm

An article filed from Dungu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and published on 4 April in The Guardian (UK) newspaper was titled, “‘We don’t know of any Kony video’: villagers tell of reality of violent attacks.” As the title of the article makes clear, the Invisible Children Kony 2012 video that created such a YouTube sensation was, not surprisingly, literally invisible to the vast majority of people actually affected by the LRA.  And the same has certainly remained the case with the follow-up video as well.  Of course, the target audience of these videos was not intended to be people in places such as Dungu.

The Guardian article depicts in clear and considerable detail the damage and terror afflicted on local people by LRA violence.  It describes the “desperate choices” faced by those who have fled to “overcrowded camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in and around Dungu”; it then continued with how the displaced and “the staff working at overstretched and under-resourced humanitarian agencies, all return to one fundamental need: improved security that would allow people to leave the camps and return home.”

The article concludes with the following paragraphs:

In October 2011, US president Barack Obama deployed 100 US military advisers to the region to help in the fight against the LRA and to improve security. Two of those advisers are in Dungu.

But military intervention carries high risks. “All we ask is that they are well co-ordinated. We don’t want another situation like in 2008,” says local civil society leader Father Benoit Kinalegu, referring to another US-advised offensive against the LRA that was unsuccessful and led to the reprisal Christmas massacres of civilians in 2008 and 2009. In a massacre at Makombo, 300 people were butchered and 150 abducted.

“If they [the Americans and Congolese army] plan their operations badly then it is very dangerous. But we hope they will do it professionally, and will succeed in protecting the local population,” says Kinalegu.

Back in Gangala Na Bodio [a village near Dungu that has been attacked by the LRA], Nalunga Tungati, who was also abducted by the LRA, agrees. “If the US soldiers come and do their job we will be very happy, but we have seen no sign of them yet.”

Thus the article summarizes well the fundamental dilemma of dealing with the violence and havoc wrought by the LRA.  People in LRA-affected areas desperately need protection against the LRA, but the dangers of using a military approach to the problem of the rebels – as explained by Father Kinalegu – are both very real and very well known.

An article just published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies – Ronald R. Atkinson, Phil Lancaster, Ledio Cakaj, & Guillaume Lacaille, “Do No Harm: As Assessment of a Military Approach to the Lord’s Resistance Army, pp. 371-82 – explores this dilemma in detail.  Its conclusions are unambiguous: the conditions necessary for a military approach to deal successfully with the LRA, while also providing the protection that local civilians so desperately need, are too many and too great likely to be met.  This conclusion becomes clear, the article argues, once realities on the ground are recognized, acknowledged, and realistically evaluated.

These realities include: (i) the vast extent and difficult nature of the terrain in which the LRA operate; (2) the capabilities of even a weakened LRA to survive and inflict damage on local populations; (3) the limited capabilities and demonstrated poor discipline and performance of the four national forces – from Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and Central African Republic – that are supposed to operate against the LRA; (4) the limited political interests and commitments of the same four governments on the LRA issue; and (5) the inadequate financial and other resources that can thus be realistically expected to deal with the problem.

It is difficult to imagine that these virtually insurmountable obstacles can be overcome or transformed by the arrival of 100 US troops or the promise of African Union military coordination (a promise that includes no additional troops or other resources beyond those already present in the anti-LRA effort, and with an established history of suspicion and non-cooperation among the four armies).  What is thus essentially on offer is more of the same: the continued insistence on a military approach that has proven, for a quarter century, to be a failure in terms of both defeating the LRA and protecting civilians.

So the good Father’s warning quoted in the Guardian article above – that a military approach to the LRA, unless successful, can be “very dangerous” – deserves to be heard.  And heeded.  He and others in and around Dungu, and those in other LRA-affected areas, have experienced the devastating consequences for civilians of failed military operations against the rebel group.  Reprisals against civilians are a great danger indeed.

Hence, contrary to the increased calls for a military approach, epitomized by wide-spread support for the US troop deployment and fanned into a (brief) firestorm by Invisible Children’s blatantly simplistic Kony 2012 video, the article urges a more cautionary position. This position takes its cue from the Hippocratic oath, administered to physicians when they assume the responsibilities of trying to protect against, or cure, the ravages of disease: First, do no harm.

For free online access to the article, go to http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjea20/current.

Sandrine Perrot, Sciences Po, Center for International Studies (CERI), France

“We are storytellers. We are visionaries, humanitarians, artists, and entrepreneurs. We are a generation eager for change and willing to pursue it”.
-Invisible Children “Who we are”, Official site, http://www.invisiblechildren.com/index.html

“It’s not the exact accurate story, (…) but for me the film really isn’t about reality. It’s about the transformation of imagination, about creativity, about belief. That basically, if you believe, you can make anything happen.”
-Marc Forster about Finding Neverland, quoted by Kristin Hohenadel, “Behind the Writer Behind Peter Pan”, New York Times, November 7, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/movies/moviesspecial/07hohe.html?pagewanted=print&position

On April 20^th hundreds of thousands of young activists worldwide had been asked to cover the walls of their towns with posters of Joseph Kony to make him famous. That was the call of the young Californian NGO, Invisible Children, that posted the Kony 2012 video on the web. In less than a week, Kony 2012 became the most viral video in the history of the Internet and social media. Invisible Children succeeded in a few days in making Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), famous. The 30-minute video gathered 100 million views in only 6 days after being posted on YouTube, quicker than Britain’s Got Talent performance of Susan Boyle (100 million views in 9 days) and much quicker than Lady Gaga’s video clip Bad Romance (100 million views in 18 days).[1] Coincidentally, Kony 2012 swept across social media sites when, in Uganda, Machine Gun Preacher was premiering (2011).  In this movie, directed by Marc Forster, Sam Childers, a biker, gang member and drug dealer, finds redemption by converting to Christianity and devoting his life to saving child victims of the LRA. Fun fact: Childers had his life-changing moment while watching a TV report about this very conflict.[2] A story that sounds strangely close  to Invisible Children’s origins and mobilisation strategies. But this is fiction. In reality, the transformative power of Kony 2012 is highly debatable. The “Cover the night” event obviously failed in transforming digital activism into action.

Since its creation in 2004 by three students from San Diego, who just returned from a film escapade in northern Uganda facilitated by evangelical networks, Invisible Children has organised many advocacy campaigns on the LRA atrocities, using film production, social actions and happenings in major American towns.[3] It actively took part in the efficient lobbying campaign that led President Obama to sign the LRA Disarmament Act (2010) and subsequently to the deployment of 100 military advisors in Uganda and Central African Republic (CAR) at the end of 2011.

Kony 2012, through the storytelling of LRA victims and classic emotional hooks around universal childhood, lobbies to make the LRA atrocities known world-wide in order to maintain US forces in LRA affected areas and enable the arrest of Joseph Kony before the end of 2012. The video carries along the imprudent use of unverified and unverifiable data, over-simplification, dubious amalgamation (between Kony, Osama Bin Laden and Hitler for example) and factual approximations.[4] All this has been clearly set out in the thousands of critical comments posted on the Internet. The same criticisms had been raised about their first movie Invisible Children: Rough Cuts (2004).[5] But in the end, the innovative nature of this phenomenon does not lie in what the video tells us about Joseph Kony, the LRA, or the resolution of the conflict. The innovation lies in the phenomenon itself and what it reveals about new digital modes of mobilisation of Western youth and the way that youth is redefining –  via social media – its relationship to the world and the concomitant transformation of the humanitarian and fund raising industries.

The IC campaign is front and center in the eruption of social media in the public space. It displays its willingness to cope with the attention deficit disorders of the international community by lessening the impact of classical lobbying and celebrity diplomacy through the virtuosities of video-making and virtual social networks. In terms of conflict resolution, the video as such is a non-event. In northern Uganda, where the LRA hasn’t been active since 2006, the video had little effect beyond provoking anger and frustration among some northern Ugandans at being used for self-promotion and commercialisation purposes. The news on the front burner is far different. The area is plagued by another insecurity, which has attracted much less worldwide awareness: an epidemic of nodding disease that has already affected more than 3000 children. The  causes of the disease are unknown and its eradication would need human and financial resources for research and treatment. The discussions about the LRA are not about arresting Kony but about whether to sue LRA former top commanders for war crimes and crimes against humanity or offer them amnesty.

In Congo or CAR making Kony famous by sharing the video, wearing a bracelet or sticking his poster in Western streets won’t bring any solution to the highly difficult operational terrain, the underlying strategic divisions between Washington, USAID, the State Department and the Defence Department, or the weak coordination and strong tensions between the Ugandan, Congolese and central African militaries deployed since December 2008. The Congolese government, as the government of CAR did before, accused the Ugandan military of taking advantage of the joint mission to illegally exploit Congolese natural resources. As a consequence, the UPDF does not have any official base in the Congo anymore, while the LRA is still very active there.[6] The poorly financed AU mission created on March 23^rd will first have to smooth these recurrent tensions.[7] It will not affect either the extreme mobility of the LRA or its amazing adaptation and organisational mutation capacity. The real tracking of Kony is not played at the top of youths’ lungs in the streets of San Diego, Washington or New York, but quietly, by a few hundred regional soldiers and a handful of US special forces deployed in the Central African Republic. This virtual awareness raised by Kony 2012 though is probably welcomed by the US military to popularly legitimise and give ideological cover for its actions on the ground. And there is little doubt that the video makers will try to claim part of the success, should Kony be arrested.

The video, however, is an event in terms of use of social media for charity.  In spite of its juvenile naiveté appearances, the team of artists, webmasters and young graduates in mass communication and applied maths of IC developed an implacable mastery of viral marketing. The first trailer of the campaign was posted as early as December 2011 on Vimeo, a website dedicated to a more selective screening of high quality videos than YouTube, and dedicated to professional video makers, churches, and humanitarian organisations. The viral diffusion of this video percolated on Vimeo from February 20, 2012 before it exploded a few hours after it was posted on YouTube on March 5, 2012, bypassing UN, government and media agendas to impose their own temporality in bringing the conflict into the spotlight.[8]

Source : Visible Measures[9]

The viral propagation was first provided by the professional Vimeo pre-viewers but also by the previous capillary support networks built among US campuses and evangelical circles when publicising IC’s first movie in 2004 and 2005. IC ensured the after-sale support through an overwhelming presence on all social media sites in order to maximise its referencing (including via an application for mobile phones, the LRA crisis tracker created by IC to map LRA or so-called LRA attacks[10]) and through a multitude of by-products (bracelets, T-shirts, posters, etc.). On its website, Invisible Children targeted a restricted circle of culture and policy makers liable to efficiently diffuse their mobilisation call.  And the whole campaign was widely relieved by sister lobbying groups, like Resole or the Enough Project.

Through a slick aesthetic and an MTV-like jerky rhythm, the video aims for only one audience: the “digital natives” of the American youth. It drills home only one motto – share this video – while convincing Internet users that through this simple and immediate action, they will positively change the world. Light on contextual elements, the video doesn’t aim at comprehension but action. A predefined, reflex-like, clickable action. Invisible Children doesn’t dwell on chocking negative images of the LRA war. They even intersperse them with long positive and self-centred joyful scenes of young IC activists. In a fully uninhibited “Save Darfur” way,[11] Kony 2012 depoliticises and dehistoricises the conflict. It smoothes complexities to raise the digital mobilisation to the rank of a moral cause, of an international solidarity gesture from youth to youth[12]. Fundamentally, the success of this campaign capitalises on a thorough knowledge of the identity aspirations of the “Y generation,”[13] who grew-up in a world where laptops, video games and the Internet define a way of living. On Facebook, Twitter, or on any other social media site, this digital activism defines the Internet user as a person, builds his/her profile, anchors him/her in a community and defines their relationship to the world.[14]

The elevation of this video to the rank of social phenomenon has limits, however. It first questions the financial convertibility of this digital activism. In 2009, the blogger and social scientist, Evgeny Morozov, highlighted that “Saving the children of Africa,” a popular Facebook group gathering 1.2 million members, only raised US $6000  (i.e. half a penny per person).[15] According to The Guardian, Invisible Children collected US $5 million in 48 hours, which – not by dollar amount, but by the time spent to collect it –  ranks this fundraising campaign as one of the fastest in humanitarian history.[16] Time will say if over the months, the youth financial mobilisation (or, through them, their parents) will reach amounts collected by classical campaigning. Secondly, beyond the local controversial echo of the video that led to the cancelling of public screenings in Northern Uganda,[17] one has to question the auto-regulation effects of digital mobilisations, i.e. the backlash effect of counter-mobilisations on the web. The momentum of the video stalled only 15 days after it was posted on the web, and the follow-up video was a flop. It is difficult to determine whether the target group has been mainly reached or if the video’s progress has been impeded by the fierce critical and spontaneous reactions of not only humanitarian professionals and academic circles, but also of another part of the “Y generation” via videos, posts, tweets and comments on various websites questioning the NGO’s credibility and scrutinizing its financial reports.[18]

Whatever the reason, this video sets a precedent. It successfully materialises an ongoing reflection in humanitarian circles about the terrific efficiency of viral mobilisation. This humanitarianism 2.0 bypasses UN, governmental and media agendas to impose its own advocacy temporality.[19] Among the 100 million viewers, the most attentive have certainly been non-profit and fund-raising organisations. Kony 2012 has become a textbook case the humanitarian is already learning from,[20] a standard according to which we’ll gauge the success of an advocacy campaign. “People are tantalized by the potential it suggests. Over the past week, the campaign has been a hot topic among nonprofit leaders,” comments Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of Amnesty International-USA. “Over years, we’ve reached this scale. But not on a single issue or a single action or playing a single video.”[21] So from now on, there is no doubt that non-profit organisations will strive to meet the “Kony 2012” benchmark, provided that they assume the controversies that will come with it.[22]

Gulu
Saturday April 21, 2012

As if in defiance of the controversy surrounding their Kony 2012 video, Invisible Children (IC), an American NGO in Gulu, has screened a second video termed ‘Beyond Famous’ with the intention of mobilizing further support in their quest to make LRA leader Joseph Kony known worldwide.

Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in northern Uganda. The two decades of civil strife in Uganda have led to the death of thousands and the displacement of about 1.8 million people in internally displaced persons (IDP) settlements.

Now the video, highly criticized for its simplicity and for downplaying the complexity of the conflict, has failed to convince victims of the war. Margaret Aciro, whose picture is shown with lips, nose and ears taken away from her body in the video, complains that the campaign is geared toward making a profit for Invisible Children campaigners.

The ‘charity’ organization screened the first Kony 2012 video and ‘Beyond Famous,’ the second video, on April 14 at the Acholi War Memorial Stadium in Gulu Municipality.

Over 10,000 people left their villages to watch it. But with unprecedented disappointment, the anxiety ended in agony when they pelted stones at the organizers. One person was killed and several others injured in the midnight melee, as police used tear gas and live ammunition to disperse the charged crowd.

“I went and watched the first Kony video but I decided to return home before the second one was screened because I was dissatisfied with its content. I became sad when I saw my photo being used and I knew they were using it to make profits,” Aciro said. “It felt it was worthless to screen it. People’s expectations were never met because old pictures of children commuting to town ten years back were instead used; the film also showed white people more than the blacks who suffered here; a white son? They should not advocate for a military solution because it has taken over 20 years and Kony is still a healthy man without a problem,” she said.

Aciro is not a happy woman with IC and its top leadership, particularly its country director Jolly Okot. “The organization is not helping real people who need this campaign most, like me,” she said. Aciro is one of the many victims of the war and yet not benefiting from IC, which claims to be supporting them.

Though Okot maintains that it is difficult to fulfill every person’s needs, Aciro made the decision to leave. “She has a perplexed mind and demands, and the decision was left to her to choose either to stay or to leave, and she chose the latter,” Okot said. While telling of her experience, Aciro recalls how she was found in her garden with ten other women on March 22, 2003 in Paicho village in Gulu.

She said IC should not have used her picture that way or shown the Kony video because it reminded her of her dark days. “It came into my mind how the rebels maimed me and then abandoned me to go because I was pregnant, and of how they killed my colleagues,” Aciro said.

Convinced that her trauma would settle down with the assistance she received from IC and their bead making project in 2003, life seemed to get better. But Aciro knew little about her expulsion from the bead making venture under IC. She said she knew it was normal to complain against human rights violations by their mentors, only to find herself an odd woman out.

“They never wanted me to work anywhere because they had already given me a job which paid for less. They could not hold to complaints of poor working conditions,” she said.

Since then she has spent her days making brooms and sponges to sell locally, to help raise her family at Holy Rosary village in Gulu Municipality. She cannot resettle to her village in Paicho sub-county because of land disputes and people’s attitudes towards her status as a former LRA abductee.

Aciro was not the only one cajoled by the radio announcement to watch the video. Olweny Richard, the pioneer of IC, does not feel convinced either. “It’s a mockery by the American people who do not want to understand our plight and what the video impact has created,” Olweny said.

“The IC used us children of war as a soft landing, yet we should be the very people to be provided with scholarships or tell how we arrived at the Invisible Children organization. We are the right people to give name to them [Ugandans],” Olweny said. He is a practicing photographer with Youth Photography, a community based organization formed by war children. Together with his friend, Simon Peter Olak, another victim, they prefer to forgive Kony in order to pursue national reconciliation, but not Invisible Children officials for their opportunism. “Kony killed under the influence of evil spirit; and what about IC, is it under the influence of spirit or money?” Olak said.

Insulated from the criticism, and embraced by local politicians, ministers and legislators, IC launched a second video after Kony 2012. During the launch on April 14, the event turned out more happiness and celebration, marked by dancing and thrilling speeches to the people of northern Uganda. The Democratic Party President and once Gulu Chairman Norbert Mao praised IC by attacking critics of the Kony video as agents of evil.

As usual in Uganda, dignitaries and invited guests of IC were paid allowances for their appearance in such an event. “The world needs to know what the LRA did to us and what Kony is still doing in neighboring countries,” Mao asserted. Religious leaders have distanced themselves from the video, condemning it and calling it ‘catastrophic.’

The Arch Bishop of Gulu Diocese, also a member of Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, Rt. Rev. John Baptist Odama, said the video was ill-motivated, igniting anger in the population and causing violence. “People booed at the leaders, someone died and tear gas was used; I do not know how it will end in practical terms. This is catastrophic, is causing chaos, is igniting more actual situations of starting fresh war but the people do not want that,” Odama said at the Cathedral.

“They have not consulted the stakeholders before showing the video, and the military approach has been long and the oldest approach, which has never yielded satisfactory fruits as being propagated. Our question is do you stop fire with fire?” he added.

The outspoken Bishop and award winning icon of peace says if the military option had not been used against Kony in 2008 during the peace negotiation in Juba, South Sudan, the Final Peace Agreement would have been signed by the elusive rebel leader.

Opposition views look at the Kony peace gesture as viable, but his critics say he has always exploited such avenues in order to regroup and rearm.

“We had gone far with Kony on 28 November 2008 in the jungle, some of us met him, talked to him and slept in his house, and if it continued that way, everything would have been finalized,” Odama said.

Odama was made hopeful by the work of IC in terms of infrastructural development and scholarships to disadvantaged children marginalized by the war in northern Uganda. His disappointment only comes with the Kony video, which he says has already brought IC’s integrity to ridicule.

“Invisible Children has done good things on the ground. They started when we spent a night on the town streets with commuting children. They started by paying school fees for stranded children and constructing schools, but this film has brought them into controversy. Some people think they are being duped into war mongering instead of helping them. It’s the right time they should rethink their position,” Odama said.

Uganda Deputy House Speaker of the National Parliament Mr. Jacob Oulanya, who was invited by the organization to throw a towel on their back, did not stand with his host. “The peace is continuing, yes, and it has to continue. There are foot soldiers and politicians who will take responsibility for this. We must remember what we went through, we must remember the songs we sang…it’s a real moment for us to focus on the gains,” Oulanya said.

“The question is how can we transform the bad effects of the war for the good of the people in this region and the country? To achieve it, we need our collective hands, brains, thoughts, speeches and spirits. We should not be diversionary,” he emphasized. Oulanya said people must commend the Ugandan army for bringing calm in the country’s north.

In a cynical view, Oulanya believed that when a military option is arrived at without wide consultation, the result will be unsatisfactory.

“We should thank UPDF who walked on bare feet and torn clothes to protect the people in this region and they are our heroes. We should stop living in denial and if we forget about the little peace, then we are finished,” Oulanya said.

But this potent statement would not deter IC from its objective of a military solution to capture the LRA chief. Records indicate that seventeen US military advisers in 2007 provided logistics, communications, and intelligence support to the Lightening Thunder operation against LRA in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. The mission was a failure.

With the new trend of the Invisible Children military campaign, some feel they are being duped into a direct conflict. A Wikileaks report from the US Mission in Kampala to Washington DC has indicated that IC provided intelligence reports to the Ugandan military against some people in Acholi. According to the report, dozens of civilians and government critics were arrested and charged with terrorism and treason, and are now in Luzira maximum prison.

Mr. Patrick Komakech, the reports suggest, was a beneficiary of Invisible Children.

The Chief Executive Director of IC Mr. Ben Keesey, who was in Gulu recently, denied this allegation. Keesley said IC does not share any intelligence reports with the security apparatus. “I must say every care is being made so that every abducted member of the LRA comes home safely. Our position is to arrest top leadership of the LRA unless they surrender,” Keesley said.

“We are an independent nongovernmental organization, period. We are not in collaboration with the state. We know one of our beneficiaries, a formerly abducted young man, has shared his relationship with us. Any information of sharing intelligence reports with security is wrong,” he insisted.

However, the LRA Peace team leader Justine Labeja has hit at the organization for being complicit in US rogue and murderous activities in Central Africa. In a letter to the media, Labeja said “It is a cheap and banal panic act of mass trickery to make unsuspecting people of the world complicit in the US rogue and murderous activities in Central Africa,” Labeja wrote. He said the video glossed over the complexity of the insurgency and simplified its content to defend and the role of the Uganda government in the war.

“Whatever may be the answer to the foregoing Kony 2012 video, it is a clear act of malicious deception and manipulation of world mass consciousness,” Labeja said.

The Uganda government has also loaded a rebuttal on YouTube against Kony 2012.

Invited as Chief Guest to the ‘Beyond Famous’ video, Uganda Prime Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi criticized part of the film for neglecting some facts.

Analyzing the video, Ugandans also criticized it in part for calling it a Central African state. Since it was posted on the internet, it attracted over 100 million viewers across the globe but left thousands grappling with fresh memories.

From its maker Jason Russell to survivor Aciro Margret, no one is yet sure of who is the net beneficiary or net producer of the security the video is supposed to have provided.

For those of us who have been screaming against the wind to get sustained attention on northern Uganda, the emergence of the KONY2012 video in the world stage was a gift horse – shiny and spectacular.  We should have appreciated the exposure; after all there were over a hundred million sets of eyes looking at it. For ten days in which the viral nature of the video permeated all forms of media including internet, radio, TV and print, KONY2012 found its way into conversations on the bus, in the grocery store, amongst my students in Vancouver (one who cried when she watched the video) and in the nightmares that returned when I went to bed at night.  The immense sadness after I first watched the video emanated from the realization that much of the footage was recycled from Invisible Children’s 2006 video, Invisible Children: Rough Cut.  There was nothing new.  What was packaged as an awareness campaign to empower young people into making a difference was a repackaging of the old recording along with historical footage of Joseph Kony and edited seamlessly to contrast with images of the birth of an American child and the awakening of thousands of young Americans as they responded to Jason Russell’s cri de coeur: Who are you to end a war?  I’m here to tell you who are you not to?  Indeed.

Those of us for whom the situation in northern Uganda has remained close to our hearts heard this cry like déjà vu. I was a teenager in Uganda when Joseph Kony founded his rebel group in resistance to President Yoweri Museveni in 1987. At the time, there were several other rebel groups fighting Museveni’s National Resistance Army/Movement that had taken over power in a coup d’état in January 1986. The LRA was the only rebel group that had survived through the decades, creating havoc and devastation in northern Uganda through the districts of the Acholi, Lango and Teso people as well as parts of West Nile.  The war had gone on in full view of the rest of the world and it was often quoted as the ‘longest running war in Africa.’

Today, the war that Joseph Kony is embroiled in is no longer in Uganda.  But KONY2012 was not a video about the situation in northern Uganda, or it might have addressed the issues of concern over there.  The situation in northern Uganda, as has been pointed out by others including the government of Uganda, isn’t one characterized by night-commuting children and child abductions carried out by the LRA.  Northern Uganda is a post-conflict zone that is focused on reconstruction, reconciliation and recovery efforts by civil society, ordinary Ugandans, NGOs and government.  The fallout from the war in northern Uganda is severe and right now there’s an outbreak of an awful disease, the incurable “nodding disease” that has afflicted thousands of children in northern Uganda and killed over a hundred of them.  The stress of living in a post-conflict zone, especially in a place where people were displaced and have only recently returned to their homes, is compounded by the inability of the central government to provide services like adequate schooling and healthcare for its citizens.  There are numerous challenges facing the region. However, people strive for better every day, and reports of bustling towns like Gulu, emerging from the ashes, is testament to the spirit of the people and their well-wishers who work side by side to support them. No doubt there is still much work to be done, but the KONY2012 was never about northern Uganda, or it might have had these issues at the forefront.

So what was the viral video about and what did it contain that led to its hugely successful marketing?  What was Invisible Children selling that had so many people order the $30 kits that run out in no time at all? KONY2012 pandered to the privilege that Teju Cole has referred to as “the ability to enjoy ignorance.” So runs this line of thinking: We didn’t know.  Now we know.  We can do something. We can buy a kit for $30.00 to help stop Kony.  Let’s tweet and share and repost and get ready to plaster the cities we live in with STOPKONY posters. Let’s put on our KONY2012 t-shirts and wear the bracelets.  We will stop Kony before the video expires in December 2012. If only it were that simple. If only we’d thought about this years ago.  How many lives could we have saved from nightmares, torture, certain and uncertain death?  How much time could we have saved by preventing the continual suffering of more than 90% of the Acholi people as well as the Teso and Lango people of Uganda incarcerated in displacement camps, or rather death camps where people died, at one point at the rate of one thousand every week for over a decade?

“There’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” Jason Russell states at the beginning of KONY2012.  Apparently the time is now and Invisible Children took the opportunity to launch the campaign to stop Joseph Kony and this idea was embraced by many people who responded exactly as they were asked to.  People made a contribution to TRI, an unexplained agency in the video, ordered a kit that included posters, a t-shirt and a bracelet that is uniquely numbered and can be registered online.  In the process of ‘enjoying’ this ignorance, thousands –  if not hundreds of thousands – of young people could not resist drawing a parallel between themselves and their grandparents and great grandparents, three or four generations earlier, and the failure to stop the Holocaust in WWII. There is a certain symbolism in the numbered bracelets, a powerful signal recalling the victims whose arms were inked with unique numbers, registered as they were condemned to unimaginably horrific deaths in Europe.  Today, the self proclaimed visionaries, storytellers and filmmakers of KONY2012 have managed to get thousands of people re-enacting the awful tattooing of the Jews while deceiving them into thinking that all they have to do to stop a war is be aware of it; send a nominal fee to sustain the presence of a hundred American troops in Uganda; and spread the word.  As if awareness was enough to stop a war.  As if awareness is all it takes to be empowered and charged.

At the Nuremberg trials that were held after WWII, a solemn declaration was made that “never again” would humanity let such depravity loose on its people.  In 1998, Bill Clinton echoed this sentiment in Rwanda while at the same time, a few hundred kilometres away in northern Uganda, the abduction of children had intensified and people were already living in camps. They had been given forty eight hours by the government in 1996 to enter the displacement camps or face charges of supporting the rebels if they chose to stay on their lands.  While Clinton was pacifying the Rwandese and the guilt-ridden West was falling over itself to help Rwanda back on its feet, the world’s attention was so focused on Kigali that the people of northern Uganda had to be invisible at the time.  Years later, when the crisis in Darfur erupted in 2003, the world was quick to call it genocide, and the people of northern Uganda, steeped in horrific and sustained war from both the government and the LRA were still to be ignored for years to come.  There we were, screaming against the wind, for change, for attention, for anything to stop that madness and it seemed to us that nobody cared.

Still, those people who have consistently fought for peace in northern Uganda did not give up, even though it was hard to address a world that is easily distracted by sexier issues – the newest technologies, best athletes, richest men and women, record breaking short marriages, the sexual appetites of Hollywood and the election of the first African American president. Kacokke Madit (KM), an international conference was convened in London, UK, in 1997 by the Acholi people in the diaspora.  That conference was also attended by representatives from both the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army as well as NGOs and civil society to discuss ways in which peace could be secured for the homeland in northern Uganda.  Another KM was convened in 1998 to continue the work they had begun the year before – securing a way for peace at home.  The third meeting was to be held in Arusha, Tanzania, but was cancelled because of the outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, which would have precluded the attendance of people from Uganda.  Olara Otunnu, an Acholi man and a former representative at the UN mourned for the children of northern Uganda as he received the Sydney Peace Prize in 2005:

And so, what shall I then tell the children of northern Uganda – when they ask about the dark deeds that is stalking their land and devouring its people? What will it take, and how long will it take, for leaders of the western democracies in particular to acknowledge, denounce and take action to end the genocide unfolding in northern Uganda?

So if the video was not about northern Uganda, and it wasn’t about the situation in northern Uganda, could it be that it was about the young people discovering the power that is inherent in their privilege and access to information and technology?  If you had an audience of a hundred million viewers and a budget of several million dollars to make a video for them, what would you include and what would you leave out?  Would you include the bloodletting in Homs, Syria, and provide a background to the present situation over there? Would you make a video about the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Indonesia, Hurricane Katrina, or the triple tragedy that occurred in Japan last year whose first anniversary was overshadowed by the release of KONY2012?  Would you indulge in victim porn, with camera angles that show close-up shots of tear streaked faces and voices crying, that continue after the screen has faded to black?  If you were interested in the well-being of kidnapped children forced into a life of sexual slavery and other abuse, would you ignore the story of the Moroccan teenager who was forced to marry her rapist and reportedly made to ingest enough rat poison to kill her? What would you do with a budget of several million dollars and an army of over a hundred million people who are intent on maintaining the traffic on the internet superhighway?

Those of us who care about northern Uganda had hoped that KONY2012 might be able to sustain enough interest for the potential of even a fraction of the hundred million viewers to take a critical stance and ask questions about why they didn’t know what was going on in their planet. We hoped that they would locate Uganda in East Africa, not Central Africa where it has never been. We hoped that they’d challenge the idea that armed conflict is not the answer to nodding disease, land evictions, structural failures, marginalization, child prostitution, HIV/AIDS and the summary arrests of people who want to walk to work in protest against high fuel and rising food costs. If there was an insistence to declare a war, why not declare it on any of the issues that affect the people in northern Uganda today?

We hoped that some of the hundred million viewers might pause to think that their privilege could be located in the fact that at the moment they do not live in a war zone, and question how that position might enable them to connect with those who have lived through it. They may be damaged, or traumatized, but they are still able to teach us, to tell us, to take action, to enunciate what it means to be human in the face of all that horror. A hundred million viewers is about three times the population of Canada, the country in which I live and work.  I carry my Ugandan heritage through my parents who were both born there, and through them my grandparents and great grandparents all the way back as far as we can remember.  By accident of my birth in Kenya where my parents lived in exile, Uganda became that elusive home that my parents wouldn’t stop talking about.  I lived in Uganda for almost a decade, slightly less than a quarter of all the time I’ve been alive, but still, northern Uganda is the place where my grandmother buried my umbilical cord and therefore the place that will always call to me.  This painful soil that I call home is also the inspiration for the KONY2012 video.  It has borne the brunt of much suffering over the years but it has also produced and continues to present some of the most remarkable people on earth.

Religious leaders organized themselves — Anglican, Catholic and Muslim — uniting under the banner of ‘peace as freedom’ and creating the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI).  Together, these leaders are an example of how religions can and should work together for their congregants.  They have been leaders in the peace talks, going to the Democratic Republic of Congo to negotiate with the LRA and convincing the government of Uganda that amnesty for the people who were abducted by the LRA was a sensible way to move forward after war. The Imams and Bishops and Fathers walked with and slept alongside the night commuting children while the world turned its face away. These people urged for and successfully convinced the government to provide amnesty for abducted children.

Other notable Ugandans include the Acholi women, survivors of the war in the north, who raised money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina; the unarmed woman politician, Betty Bigombe who walked into the bush to find Joseph Kony and make him sit down and talk peace; the late Dr. Matthew Lukwiya who refused to leave his people dying of Ebola and continued to treat people as he himself was dying; the list is endless – we’re loving and fearless, weak and beaten, powerless in the might of the slick video presentations, but we’re not voiceless and we never have been.

To watch KONY2012 you’d never know about the thousands of hardworking and passionate people who are already doing good work in northern Uganda, and the allies that they work with.  I was surprised that the video hardly focused on Invisible Children’s initiatives in the country.  As an organisation, and as can been attested from their website, they have built schools, trained and hired people to work as seamstresses and bracelet makers; and they have sponsored many children to get an education through scholarships.  I wonder if that was not sexy enough to garner the attention of a hundred million viewers.  After all, not that long ago, Gulu, northern Uganda had the highest concentration of NGOs in the world.  Perhaps they decided that advocacy fatigue had set in and the campaign needed to have a more nefarious hook.  Who better than Joseph Kony who still roams the jungles of the Central African Republic?

Given the existing footage of night-commuting children and the terror associated enacted by that child whose face was frozen for a moment on the screen, what better way to link a living dread to the power of a nominal fee that promises to stop the nightmare from turning into reality?  Could a hundred million viewers tell the difference between what happened six years ago and what’s going on now?  Would their new-found outrage at the disappearance of thirty thousand children inspire them to demand that the government of Uganda create an independent commission that would inquire into what happened to those children?  No. No. No. The power that the video harnessed had far reaching potential to do some good arising from the awareness that Invisible Children sought to campaign for.  But to ask that an army of children in this part of the world demand that their government send troops to fight another army of abducted children is too rich for my imagination.  I didn’t expect that.  I didn’t expect that at all.

There’s no doubt about it: These young people did an amazing job. They took a simple concept, developed it in their own terms and defined the conflict in Northern Uganda for the rest of the world to see. And Uganda was left spinning! It was like the country had been tagged and now had to be ‘it!’ But I am neither a cynic, an apologist nor a pessimist. One has to give credit where credit is due. And vituperative as this might seem, the Government of Uganda ought to have had a much better response to the public relations debacle! To make it worse, not only have the Ugandans thus far [a few days after the video and campaign were released] not come up with an equally powerful response: the issue is still being defined by social media and a different generation of people. The official government response is a little frustrating to watch…and one feels that the Ugandan Government likes to have its supper eaten for itself!

Which brings me to the heart of the matter: Africa cannot develop or progress under these circumstances. No. Issues need to be defined by Africans. While African governments claim not to be in the business of communication, they need to step up their crisis communication units. Interestingly, a great many of them hire public relations firms to respond to international media on this or that issue. However, the essence of public relations is not to window dress. Public relations in the age of social media depends on the spin.

But spin needs to cloak at least a modicum of truth. In the past, you just had to have a semblance or even a whiff of fact. But these days, this is not so. If one looks at the credibility Invisible Children has lost in the past few days, there’s real danger to being a flake. The new video from this organization was slick and cool. However, it was not balanced and as a result, obloquy will follow the video over the rest of its natural life. But to whom much is given, much is expected. And African governments have, honestly, shirked their overall responsibility.

How could the Ugandan government not be held accountable for all that has happened in Northern Uganda for the past 25 years? For those who have seen the video, there was not a mention of who was culpable for all that happened during the Kony years. Either the expectations were too low to warrant a mention or the makers of the worldwide sensation around Kony 2012 were afraid to upset the powers that be. Either way, there is fecklessness in the Ugandan government. The people in power are supposed to be responsible for each and every child. Joseph Kony is a thief in the night and cannot be held responsible for crimes against humanity. He can be considered as criminally insane as those men in the U.S. who mislead people into a cult and then sanction mass suicides. Of course, if they catch him, he ought to face the highest courts of law. But where was the Ugandan government in all this? Did Mr. Museveni not swear an oath to protect all Ugandans? Again, this is at the core of why Africa does not develop: the World has such low expectations of what the governments THERE can do that they’d rather avoid them all together.

Originally published at “The Habari Network”: http://www.thehabarinetwork.com/a-preamble-why-africa-does-not-develop

RELATED: http://www.thehabarinetwork.com/it-is-all-fine-to-stop-kony-and-the-lra-but-learn-to-respect-africans

He captured these pictures of the children of Ms. Agnes Acen, sitting at their home in the former Internally Displaced Persons’ camp. Ms. Acen cannot afford to transport her three children to Atanga health center III to receive medication to control the symptoms.  As a result, one of her children died of the disease in November 2011.

Sam is currently writing an article on nodding disease, which we will feature on our blog.

Photo by Sam Lawino

 Photo by Sam Lawino

Photo by Sam Lawino

Photo by Sam Lawino

The Children are Nodding

The children would like you to take their picture
The children are smiling, laughing
The children are nodding, nodding
          Yes, they want sweets
          What children don’t?
The children are nodding, nodding
          Yes, their mother’s home
          They take you by the hand
          Lead you to the homestead
          Laughing, skipping
The children are nodding, nodding
          Yes, they’re doing well at school
          Yes, they’re fine
          Yes, they like their presents
The children are nodding, nodding
          Look up at the sky
          Beyond the pale
          Way beyond the pale
The children are nodding, nodding
The children are nodding, nodding
The children are nodding, nodding
They can’t stop
The children are nodding, nodding
The children are seized at the neck
The children are nodding
Their eyes are locked at the back of their heads
          Whites showing, whites showing
The children are nodding, it’s evening
The children are nodding, we can’t sleep
The children are nodding, they can’t eat
The children are nodding we can’t work
The children are nodding they can’t go to school
The children are nodding we tie them up
The children are nodding and dying off fast
The children are nodding, nodding
The children are nodding, nodding
The children are nodding, nodding
The children are nodding, nodding...