Letter to the President

As many of you are aware the "Kony 2012" campaign has gone viral. While these efforts are noble and eager many of these attempts may do more harm than good. The following letter is what I relayed to the White House not long ago.


First off President Obama I’d like to commend your administration on taking a step towards fighting the LRA and attempting to discover Joseph Kony. As I am sure you aware there is a large movement known as Invisible Children which seeks to spread awareness about needs in Uganda is receiving lots of media attention for the “Stop Kony” campaign or “Kony 2012”.
These members have pressured your administration and members of Congress to find Kony and bring him to justice. I don’t dispute that this is a necessary need to stop a tyrant who is bringing war and destruction to a region I do dispute several of the “facts” invisible children uses in its movies and production.
1. According to Visible Children, an anti Invisible Children blog, the company spent only 33 percent of its $8 million-plus in spending on "direct services." Some critics also point to Charity Navigator, which grades the transparency and financial earnings of charities, and Invisible Children's 2-star rating when it comes to "accountability and "transparency" (out of four).
2. And The Guardian reports that Invisible Children supports the Ugandan Army. That isn't good, because they also do plenty of bad things (arrests, torture, killings, etc.), says an expert at Human Rights Watch Africa.
3. Invisible Children also been accused of tampering with the stats they reported, inflating them. Foreign Affairs called it, "manipulated facts for strategic purposes."
To call [Kony2012's] campaign a misrepresentation is an understatement. While it draws attention to the fact that Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, is still on the loose, it’s portrayal of his alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era. At the height of the war between especially 1999 and 2004, large hordes of children took refuge on the streets of Gulu town to escape the horrors of abduction and brutal conscription to the ranks of the LRA. Today most of these children are semi-adults. Many are still on the streets unemployed. Gulu has the highest numbers of child prostitutes in Uganda. It also has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis.
This isn’t the beginning of problems seeing how there is corruption in Uganda’s government.
I don’t suggest that this administration “sits on it’s hands” and does nothing either while the people suffer. We must back successful methods for stopping autocratic warlords. I suggest working in conjunction with the African Union, United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
Thank You for your time.

MGA