Kony 2012: Invisible Children’s ambitious campaign for justice

A 27-minute documentary film entitled Kony 2012 has gone viral on the Internet, gaining a great deal of media attention for the campaign for justice against Ugandan war criminal, Joseph Kony.

The charitable group behind the video campaign, Invisible Children, describe themselves as a movement seeking to end the conflict in Uganda. The video is part of the campaign to raise support for Joseph Kony’s arrest and hold the war criminal accountable for his crimes. The group also aims to raise awareness of the use of child soldiers, sex slaves and other human rights abuses by Kony, the leader of the violent Lord’s Resistance Army.

Invisible Children’s human rights campaign “aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.”

The film begins with the story of a Ugandan boy, Jacob, who describes his brother’s death and his fears of being abducted by Kony’s violent Lord’s Resistance Army.

The video highlights abuses committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Africa under Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. Kony has been fighting against the government in Uganda since 1986 and has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

The online video campaign to make Kony popular has gained significant momentum via social media sites. The campaign has been a non-stop worldwide trending topic on Twitter for the past couple of days. The video posted on YouTube and Vimeo together have had millions of views, the majority in the last couple of days. Posted on YouTube two days ago, the video has been viewed over four million times as of writing, shared primarily via Twitter accounts and embedded on Facebook profiles.

And the film-maker behind the idea: Jason Russell. Russell set up Invisible Children and has been filming in central Africa for several years to help stop the rebel army by aiding the rebuilding of schools and implementing a warning system to protect areas from Kony’s forces.

Invisible Children have called for 20^th April to be a day of action. A huge movement called Cover the Night calls for supporters of the Kony 2012 campaign to put up hundreds of thousands of posters overnight, so not a single person can do anything without encountering a Kony 2012 poster.

Russell has proved that social media is a truly powerful weapon and that global awareness starts with a simple act. Perhaps a viral video can take down one of the world’s most wanted war criminals.

Khaleda Rahman

Watch the Kony 2012 documentary here

Donate to Invisible Children by taking a look here.

Purchase Kony 2012 products here.

Sign the Pledge here.