On Tuesday evening, Facebook news feeds were suddenly set ablaze with the phrase "Kony 2012." Students across the country changed their profile pictures to a red box with the words "Kony 2012" and "The Worst" or "Stop at Nothing" emblazoned in bold black letters. A half-hour documentary-style film encouraging viewers to "Make Kony famous" were posted to Facebook walls, and thousands of "Kony 2012 Cover the Night" Facebook events were created, with millions of people listed as attending the campaigns. Within a few hours, "Kony 2012" took the Facebook generation by storm.
The film pulls at the heartstrings of its intended audience: American middle school, high school and college students. It explains that Joseph Kony, an internationally recognized war criminal, has led the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda and surrounding Central African countries on a 26-year long tirade of abduction, murder and rape of innocent natives, primarily children. The film is the 11th on the same subject produced by the non-profit organization Invisible Children, which aims to end Kony's and his army's violent operations by publicizing it to the American public through film and online campaigns.
Invisible Children has been successful in achieving their goals. They've lobbied congress and President Obama to deploy American military aid on the ground in Uganda, and have triumphed in their goal of making Kony an infamous household name.
But they've also been intensely scrutinized for years. Scholars who study the lengthy war in Central Africa have claimed that the organization has perpetuated violence by supporting the Ugandan government in getting rid of Kony. But the Ugandan military has been accused of committing the very same atrocities of murder and sexual trafficking that Invisible Children works to end.
Researchers also claim that the LRA has not operated in Uganda since 2006, and that President Obama's decision to send representatives from the American military has paradoxically caused an uptick in the violent conflict there. According to sources that have spent time in the region, Ugandans themselves, who live in fear of President Yoweri Museveni's despotic regime, have charged Invisible Children with being more of a threat to public safety currently than the LRA itself. While these accusations could be brought into question, the fact that such inquiries must be made at all proves that we are jumping into this issue blindly and far too quickly.
The organization's financial records lead to even more questions about its true intentions. In 2011, the organization only spent $2,810,681 of its $8,894,632 total budget on direct services to stop the LRA, a mere 31.6 percent. They used nearly as much on themselves, spending a combined total of $2,799,266 on employee salaries and travel costs. They spent another $1,209,162 producing the 11 films aimed at indoctrinating American youth with their interventionist ideology. Their suspicious financial records have prompted some critics to accuse the "Kony 2012" campaign of being predominantly motivated by a desire for revenue. Such records, combined with the organization's refusal of an independent audit, has led to just a 2-of-4 rating on Charity Navigator, a well-known nonprofit rater.
At Tufts, we advocate for solutions to the world's problems. We fight for an end to violence, and for peace to take its place. We are committed to intellectual honesty thorough research, and should not accept what we hear at face value. We are skeptics, and we search to understand all facets of stories that seem implausible.
Tufts students always think for themselves. We should not log on to our Facebook accounts and immediately post a status or video with emotional appeal without looking into what we are doing. We should not insist that our friends allocate their time and money to an organization that wastes those resources. We should be ashamed of these actions, and should not buy into the hype of an emotional ploy until we are certain it will improve the reality of a situation.
We at The Tufts Daily do not encourage students to perpetuate the "Kony 2012" campaign of Invisible Children. The "Cover the Night" event will not help children in Central Africa escape the violence of their governments and the LRA; it is a waste of time, money and energy. Instead, students should work to find a plausible solution, perhaps through diplomacy, to an extremely complex and long conflict. Tufts students deserve more intellectual integrity than Invisible Children offers them.
