Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Kony 2012 and the ICC

The reach of the Kony 2012 film, propelled by social media, has been unprecedented. In the week since its release, more than 75 million people have watched it on YouTube. Many have praised it and others have criticized it. Because of this viral video, produced by the San Diego-based NGO Invisible Children, many more people know about the decade-long conflict in Northern Uganda as well as the ICC's role in promoting accountability of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and its leader Joseph Kony. In fact, most certainly more people know about this case than any other of the Court.

The purpose of the film is to "make Joseph Kony famous": to ensure that capturing him and delivering him to justice does not slip from the US political agenda. As Invisible Children makes clear on its website, the ultimate goal is to arrest him "so that he can be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a precedent for future war criminals. The goal of KONY 2012 is for the world to unite to see Kony arrested and prosecuted for his crimes against humanity." The ICC has accused Kony of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, sexual enslavement, and forced enlistment of children into the LRA.

Invisible Children has been a major force in pushing American legislation to ensure the arrest of Joseph Kony. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Rep. Edward Royce (R-Calif.), both of whom have almost perfect conservative voting records according to the American Conservative Union, have actively supported this legislation. Additionally, Invisible Children was a major factor in achieving the 2010 Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which deployed US assistance to aid regional Ugandan forces in combating the LRA.

Many have pointed to instances of inaccuracies and oversimplification in the video. It is possible, however, that the awareness promoted by this video could help sustain efforts to arrest Kony. For more information about the ICC's Uganda investigation, please refer to AMICC's research for background on the Lord's Resistance Army and Joseph Kony. For more on the history of the situation in Uganda, see this paper.

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