National Public Radio (NPR; United States) recently joined in to address a grassroots effort led by the organization, “Invisible Children.” Invisible Children seeks admirably to end the severe, diverse, and extensive forms of violence cutting across Uganda, specifically focusing on reduction and prevention of violence committed against children. Part of the organization’s activism involves savvy use of electronic media to spread its messages and enact attitudinal changes across western societies and in turn, physical changes in Uganda via increased western intervention.An overview of Invisible Children’s efforts and strategies can be seen in the video, below, which has gone viral, now viewed by over 40 million. It’s a mix of horrific stories, feel good responses, hope, and tangible strategies to address what organizers identify as the key problem – Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader, Joseph Kony (pictured above):
Parts of the video and overall effort are spot on. Obviously, the LRA must be stopped – not just Kony, but the entire organization. As noted, the video advocates that privileged individuals, groups, and even nations are part of a global community, responsible for helping to end the LRA’s terror, but that countries like the United States fail to intervene because neither their national security nor financial stability is threatened by the LRA’s actions. In other words in our everyday lives, an unfortunate culture exists where self-interest trumps selfless humanitarian endeavours, a culture exemplified by national policy.
Hence Invisible Children has undertaken a calculated approach, hoping that twenty celebrity figures will help alter a broader public consciousness that more genuinely cares about preventing children in Uganda who are sexually assaulted, forcibly made child soldiers, and killed. In turn, the strategy suggests, once public consciousness and advocacy is raised, twelve key policy makers have been identified that may be impacted by pubic pressure to get the United States more involved. And how would involvement look?
Invisible Children’s primary objective appears to be capturing LRA leader, Joseph Kony, and this is where the concern lies with regard to sustainable changes across Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and other parts of central Africa. Capturing Kony would likely stand as a critical accomplishment, one that would have tremendous symbolic influence, while also lessening violence in and around Uganda for the short-term.
However, capturing a key leader in the midst of a conflict that has been raging for decades will not have significant long-term influences. This is not to criticize the Invisible Children organization’s efforts per se. Consciousness raising regarding violence in central Africa is absolutely vital, as is stopping a violent leader, but that is only part of a more extensive, necessary approach.
The leading scholar in this field, Virgil Hawkins*, has been arguing and illustrating for years how high-income countries’ hyper-consumer cultures drive mineral wars in and around the DRC. We as a public (admittedly, including myself) demand electronic devices, whose components are derived from minerals extracted by slave labour in and around the DRC. Hence, as long as high-income, privileged consumers in the “global west” continue purchasing the latest electronic gadgets, fancy clothes, snazzy cars, sparkly jewellery, and so on, slave labour will flourish, as will the travesties that are attendant to slavery (e.g., disenfranchisement of local communities through mass assaults – including sexual assaults, forcibly made child soldiers).
Moreover, as Hawkins points out, it’s not just about Uganda, but about the much broader DRC and surrounding countries where millions (more now than the Holocaust) have been killed and sexually assaulted by both rogue armies and official state armies. As such, support of governmental military forces in Uganda and elsewhere is problematic to say the least.
Invisible Children is right, western intervention is needed to stop violent rogue tyrants, like Kony. And public awareness must be increased. But additionally, normalized violence across central Africa will not cease until consumers in North America, Western Europe, East Asia, and Australasia significantly reduce their consumption patterns. That is the deep cultural change that will truly alter violence in Central Africa. We cannot only care, but we must also stop our current actions as self-interested consumers that are directly tied to contemporary slavery and its attendant atrocities.
* Hawkins’s arguments are much more extensive and complex than this, also focusing heavily on news media content and the public’s desires for western-focused infotainment in “serious” news stories.
Photo via NPR.
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