On Friday April 20, the organization Invisible Children will host Cover the Night, an event in which the group calls for supporters of their movement all over the world to promote awareness of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.
This event tails a massive and tumultuous six-week campaign by Invisible Children, a group that aims to “make Kony famous” in hopes of putting the warlord behind bars.
While Invisible Children was officially founded in 2004, its movement found recent global recognition when their “Kony 2012” video went viral, having reached nearly 90 million views.
As the video spread furiously across Facebook and Twitter, a wave of backlash followed in its wake, with many questioning and rebuking Invisible Children’s motivations and credibility.
Many accused the charity organization of skewing and oversimplifying the actual facts about modern day Uganda while others inquired about the group’s financial transparency.
Invisible Children faced yet another public relations setback on March 17, when its founder and director Jason Russell, 33, was taken into police custody and then immediately hospitalized following a public psychotic breakdown on a California beach. The organization’s CEO Ben Keesey released a statement the following day on the incident claiming his and the group’s support for Russell.
“Russell was unfortunately hospitalized yesterday suffering from exhaustion, dehydration and malnutrition. He is now receiving medical care and is focused on getting better. The past two weeks have taken a severe emotional toll on all of us, Jason especially, and that toll manifested itself in an unfortunate incident yesterday,” Keesey said.
Without its frontman, the group has continued to move forward in mobilizing efforts to capture Joseph Kony. For almost 30 years, Kony and his followers, the Lord’s Resistance Army, have terrorized Uganda, forcing thousands of children to become soldiers or sex slaves. While the LRA and Kony were officially forced out of Uganda in 2006, the army continues to operate in the country’s jungles, as well as in nearby countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. Sources say the LRA’s past four years in the area outside of Uganda have been its bloodiest, with the UN reporting over 2,000 civilian killings and  2,600 kidnappings, while other human rights groups speculate the numbers are much higher.
Since its 2004 founding, Invisible Children has urged for US military involvement in these war torn areas of Africa. In May 2010, President Obama signed into law the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which makes the death or capture of Kony and the end of his army an official US policy.
“[This] legislation crystallizes the commitment of the United States to help bring an end to the brutality and destruction that have been a hallmark of the LRA across several countries for two decades, and to pursue a future of greater security and hope for the people of central Africa,” President Obama told reporters in 2010.
The US has since provided nearly $50 million in military support to Uganda’s military to defeat the LRA and nearly $500 million to support LRA victims, according to the Washington Post. Difficulties in locating and capturing Kony and his army can be attributed to the area’s vastness as well as its terrain, covered in impenetrable jungles which encumbers the possibility of aerial surveillance and requires a more challenging ground manhunt.
The people of Uganda have expressed considerable criticism and disapproval of both the US involvement and the Invisible Children’s campaign. While many have expressed frustration at the US’s lack of progress, after the “Kony 2012” video, many Ugandans accused Invisible Children of projecting a “white man’s burden” mentality onto the troubled African region. Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire made an official response to the YouTube video, expressing reproach to the video’s message of “an outsider trying to be a hero rescuing African children.”
Despite criticisms and controversies, Invisible Children pushes forward with its movement, and hopes the “Cover the Night” event will make considerable waves in their effort to raise awareness, urging volunteers to hang posters and stickers bearing Kony’s face and name all over the USA. While US military involvement has been stunted so far, Invisible Children aims to increase pressure for more government action.
More information on Invisible Children’s movements, efforts and business can be found on their website, www.invisiblechildren.com.  As of April 18, Kony and his rebel group had still not been captured despite condemnations and accusations of “crimes against humanity” from the UN. Jeffery Gettleman, East Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times, spent several months on the ground in Uganda analyzing and studying the LRA’s tactics. In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Gettleman said while Invisible Children might be oversimplifying, their claims of Kony’s dangers aren’t to be misread as false.
“He has been terrorizing civilians in Central Africa for more than two decades. His group will continue to do that as long as he’s around,” Gettleman said
Invisible Children faced yet another public relations setback on March 17, when its founder and director Jason Russell, 33, was taken into police custody and then immediately hospitalized following a public psychotic breakdown on a California beach. The organization’s CEO Ben Keesey released a statement the following day on the incident claiming his and the group’s support for Russell.
“Russell was unfortunately hospitalized yesterday suffering from exhaustion, dehydration and malnutrition. He is now receiving medical care and is focused on getting better. The past two weeks have taken a severe emotional toll on all of us, Jason especially, and that toll manifested itself in an unfortunate incident yesterday,” Keesey said.
Without its frontman, the group has continued to move forward in mobilizing efforts to capture Joseph Kony. For almost 30 years, Kony and his followers, the Lord’s Resistance Army, have terrorized Uganda, forcing thousands of children to become soldiers or sex slaves.
Although the LRA and Kony were officially forced out of Uganda in 2006, the army continues to operate in the country’s jungles, as well as in nearby countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. Sources said the LRA’s past four years in the area outside of Uganda have been its bloodiest, with the U.N. reporting over 2,000 civilian killings and  2,600 kidnappings, while other human rights groups speculate the numbers are much higher.
Since its 2004 founding, Invisible Children has urged for U.S. military involvement in these war-torn areas of Africa. In May 2010, President Obama signed into law the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which makes the death or capture of Kony and the end of his army an official U.S. policy.
“(This) legislation crystallizes the commitment of the United States to help bring an end to the brutality and destruction that have been a hallmark of the LRA across several countries for two decades, and to pursue a future of greater security and hope for the people of central Africa,” President Obama told reporters in 2010.
The U.S. has since provided nearly $50 million in military support to Uganda’s military to defeat the LRA and nearly $500 million to support LRA victims, according to The Washington Post. Difficulties in locating and capturing Kony and his army can be attributed to the area’s vastness, as well as its terrain, covered in impenetrable jungles which encumbers the possibility of aerial surveillance and requires a more challenging ground manhunt.
The people of Uganda have expressed considerable criticism and disapproval of both the U.S. involvement and the Invisible Children’s campaign. While many have expressed frustration at the U.S.’s lack of progress, after the “Kony 2012” video, many Ugandans accused Invisible Children of projecting a “white man’s burden” mentality onto the troubled African region. Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire made an official response to the YouTube video, expressing reproach to the video’s message of “an outsider trying to be a hero rescuing African children.”
Despite criticisms and controversies, Invisible Children pushes forward with its movement, and hopes the “Cover the Night” event will make considerable waves in their effort to raise awareness, urging volunteers to hang posters and stickers bearing Kony’s face and name all over the U.S. While U.S. military involvement has been stunted so far, Invisible Children aims to increase pressure for more government action.
More information on Invisible Children’s movements, efforts and business can be found on its website, invisiblechildren.com.  As of April 18, Kony and his rebel group has still not been captured despite condemnations and accusations of “crimes against humanity” from the U.N. Jeffery Gettleman, East Africa Bureau Chief for The New York Times, spent several months on the ground in Uganda analyzing and studying the LRA’s tactics. In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Gettleman said while Invisible Children might be oversimplifying, its claims of Kony’s dangers are not to be misread as false.
“He has been terrorizing civilians in Central Africa for more than two decades. His group will continue to do that as long as he’s around,” Gettleman said.