KONY 2012 ☮

Kanskje dette er svaret? Jeg visste at tårene ville renne, da jeg klikket play. Men jeg ble glad, og ikke håpløs. Videoen oser av håp og et fellesskap. Den treffer meg rett og slett i hjerteroten. Nå er det bare å share. Lykke til til mine 116 followers på Twitter. Nå skal det skje litt spamming.

Edit: med alt positivt kommer alltid noe negativt. Jeg fant denne informasjonen på Tumblr:

After watching the KONY 2012 video, I was completely sold. However, a friend posed an interesting idea on Facebook and I decided to do some more research, just to be better informed. The truth is, Kony is a horrible man who abducts thousands of children to turn into soldiers or slaves for his own gain. We should be spreading the word and he should be stopped -this is true.

HOWEVER

I’ve also read other information about the actual spread of the 2012 campaign. Apparently last year $8,676,614 was spent by the organisation and only 31% of this money has gone towards the actual charity program. The program makes no secret of their fees for their merchandise and has publicly denounced being audited to see where all their funding is being attributed. In the past year they have used over a million dollars to go towards the travel of the charity’s 3 main advocates. The program is also a great advocate of military intervention by Ugandan militia and various other sources, with the money that has been accounted for going to these areas. 

“Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission.”

Another large problem is that being a man who is building an army of children, he himself has bodyguards who are children. How many of them must be killed in order to get to him?
“Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children funds this military intervention.”

In summary, I do believe that making people aware of Joseph Kony’s actions is a vital part in bringing him down, but I don’t think people do enough of their own research on the subject and some blindly go ahead and support the campaign. I for one hate charities that spend a fraction of their funding on the actual program and who will not submit to auditing to see where the bulk of the money contributed goes to.

I think that people should definitely watch the film but should also definitely do their own research before making up their minds about whether to support the campaign or to just support the taking down of Kony. Awareness is definitely good, but giving money to an organisation so they can spend it on film-making and violent interventions that are perhaps not as well advised as one would think is maybe not the answer. 

Changing your facebook status or profile picture means nothing at all unless you know all the facts, which none of us do, and I don’t claim to either. I want the man stopped, but I dont know if fighting violence with violence is the answer.