The things you miss when you have a life

Gosh. I cannot believe how much i am missing on Facebook, Twitter, email, Youtube, Blogs etc etc - now that i actually have a life.

Someone sent me a link to the Kony 2012 documentary last night. I watched a bit of it, then turned it off when the T complained that he did not want to watch it. I had never heard of Joseph Kony until last night, but apparently this video has been viral since Monday night. Oops. I had missed it. Kony was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in the Hague in 2005 and has not yet been arrested. Oops. I missed that too.

I watched the rest of the documentary this morning. While i have never taken much of an interest in what goes down in Africa - the documentary did it's job in that it left me with a feeling of wanting to do whatever i could to help arrest Joseph Kony and like millions of other people over the last few days - if all i could do to help was to share the video - then i was going to do that.

My ignorance of all matters African really pee'd off former TVNZ Good Morning host and current foul mouthed junkie and useless writer - Steve Gray - for not knowing that Uganda is also trying to pass a law to kill all gays. Steve is evidently real mad that kidnapped, murdered, and raped children are getting all the attention at the moment - instead of African homosexuals.

The illiterate Steve Gray's opinion 

Whatever.

The thing that interests me in relation to the Kony 2012 video though  - and i have my Facebook friend Andy Boreham and some of his more non fried and intelligent friends to thank for getting me thinking and reading about this - is how quick i was (and millions of others are or the video would not be viral) - to jump on a bandwagon and support a cause without finding out what they are actually supporting or where the message is coming from.

Detractors of 'Invisible Children' and the Kony 2012 video are spreading their word. Apparently only 32% of the donations that they receive actually go to direct services. That is roughly a third of their income. Should i care that some of the donations go to administrative costs, salaries, and the like - if those two thirds of their income has enabled the one third to get this criminal arrested?

I don't think so. I really don't care about that.

My answer to that was that the video left me with the impression that all they wanted to do was raise awareness. They want to make Joseph Kony famous in order to put pressure on governments and politicians who are able to actually make decisions that will make a difference.

Now i am thinking about exactly how those governments and politicians will decide to go about making that difference once they are forced to by the social experiment that is Kony 2012. That led me to focus on the fact that spreading this message is not just about saving children's lives, and arresting an evil man.

There is a heck of a lot more to it than that.

I have an awesome and valid excuse for being days late in noticing the Kony 2012 trend, however i don't have an excuse for supporting a cause while remaining ignorant. So i followed a link to Let's Talk About Kony.

The last couple of paragraphs in that blog and all of the comments that followed really got me thinking.

As my angry Twitter timeline suggests, Invisible Children’s public narrative relies on basic, nigh unavoidable failings. Let’s start with the flip-side of the human rights coin: the recognition that, despite their constructed nature, perceived ethnic, cultural, and historical boundaries exist across nations, states, and physical borders. Colonialism’s historical baggage matters, and the competition for voice-representation is, for all intents and purposes, a zero-sum game. Ugandan civil society participants, particularly the ones engaged in the non-Invisible Children-affiliated reconstruction, reconciliation, and post-conflict development work, are noticeably absent from Jason Russell’s narrative. In two and a half years of grassroots advocacy work, I’ve met enough intelligent, morally sensible advocates to know that monolithic accusations of neo-colonialism, Africa-saving, and cultural condescension are, frankly, tripe. At the same time, we’re not doing enough to define the terms of empowerment, to balance our advocacy perspectives with an understanding of civil society mobilization in conflict-affected areas, and to establish meaningful, sustained cross-cultural linkages that prioritize empathy, rather than sympathy. It’s quite simply a matter of changing the conversation, and I’m not sure that Invisible Children’s Kony documentary gets us there.

Next, there’s the morality question. To be “that guy,” I’ll link to two compelling TED videos on the social-scientific and cultural shortcomings of public storytelling: first, from Tyler Cowen, the economics wiz blogger; the second, from Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist. The bottom line: stories can inspire. At the same time, inspiration runs the risk of perpetuating problematic, unintended cognitive biases. A “single story,” as Adichie calls it, can obscure a complex, multi-layered web of perceptive analysis, underscoring cultural stereotypes and simplifications. Fundamentally, the question is moral, rather than cognitive: How do we perceive the morality of conflict in northern Uganda and, more recently, Central Africa? Once we answer that question, how do we mitigate the moral consequences of our actions, to ensure that atrocities do, in fact, end? Invisible Children’s activism, added to the political lobbying of Resolve and the Enough Project, resulted in the deployment of approximately one hundred U.S. military advisers to Central Africa. The advisers’ purpose: to assist and, well, advise the Congolese, Central African (from CAR, rather than the region), Ugandan, and South Sudanese military forces in an escalated counterinsurgency campaign against the LRA throughout the region. Frankly speaking, the military advisers’ presence will likely improve, rather than deteriorate, the implementation of human rights norms in the multinational military campaign. The United States has likely learned its lessons, recognizing the counterproductive nature of Operation Lighting Thunder, a U.S.-backed 2008 “campaign of attrition” against the LRA in northern Uganda. That said, the U.S. operational partnership with the Ugandan, Congolese, Central African, and South Sudanese forces remains a political, moral, and social firestorm. The documentary’s purpose is not to delve into the complex, nuanced dynamics of military conflict, but, as it stands, day-to-day advocates for “action” have few platforms for the critical discussion of action’s moral consequences.

Lastly, let’s talk about the limits of policy intervention against the LRA. This isn’t a new conversation: as Bec Hamilton has detailed, the human rights advocacy community encountered the same challenge at the peak of Darfur mobilization. Come 2008, Darfur advocates began to talk about “Darfur fatigue”: the conflict in Sudan’s western provinces had grown more complicated, atrocities continued (albeit at a significantly lower rate), and the day-to-day advocates weren’t quite sure why. Part of the problem, of course, is the notion of the “story of now.” The public narrative’s third pillar works within the context of local organizing–limited labor-union resources demand quicker solutions, contract negotiations have deadlines, and infrastructure projects work on schedule. Foreign policy activists can’t say the same for violent conflict: the LRA has conducted a low-intensity insurgency against the central government in Kampala since the late 1980s, without any tangible reconciliation. So while the video has an expiration date of “December 31, 2012,” the LRA insurgency, the multinational stabilization campaign, and the marginalization of constituencies in Uganda’s Acholi region, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan certainly don’t. If urgent, military action against the LRA is part of the solution–and, in spite of the potential moral costs, it probably should be–it’s only a part. And, as Mark Kersten’s field research has suggested, the peace/justice dilemma is perhaps more complicated in northern Uganda than in any of the other six situations currently under review by the International Criminal Court.

What does this mean? In order to move past #KONY2012, to promote credible approaches to conflict resolution in Central Africa, anti-Kony advocates need to be prepared to move past the public narrative, past the sexy, and past the action kit. On March 6, hundreds of people told me to take thirty minutes out of my evening to watch Invisible Children’s Kony documentary. If, on March 7, you’re not taking thirty minutes out of your evening to read the International Crisis Group’s November 2011 report on the way forward for stabilization and conflict resolution in LRA-affected areas, you’re not doing your job correctly.

I am still of the view that raising awareness has to be a good thing -  but i am not convinced that military intervention will do anything to actually help Ugandan children - and i may be mistaken but i think that is what we are supporting when we share and 'like' the Kony 2012 video.

I could be wrong though.

That happened once. Back in 1987. ;)

Discussion is raising awareness though - so either way - Kony 2012 has done it's job.