When I downloaded and watched KONY 2012 on YouTube, I was viewer 32,612,704. You can watch it there or visit the Invisible Children website.

Thirty-two million people have watched it, so why do so many of my smart, liberal, human rights oriented friends hate it so? Certainly there were moments that made me wince, and there were moments when I ground my teeth in irritation, but I think we might like to look a little deeper.

Critique

You don’t have to do much research to find the critiques. As far as I can tell they revolve around several points:

1. Much of the film features and promotes the film maker and his saccharin enriched offspring.
2. Factual inaccuracies in the script.
3. The movie and the campaign are at worst a neo-colonialist, appropriation of African history, and at best politically naïve, and uninformed. Either way they have the potential to cause great harm?
4. Joseph Kony and the LRA are old news - this should have happened ten years ago at the height of the LRA’s campaign of terror.
5. Downloading and sharing videos does nothing but make those downloading and sharing feel better about themselves.
6. Veiled accusations of financial impropriety, clearly the film-maker is making money off this.

Let’s look at those again!

1. Granted – q.v. the wincing and tooth grinding above! There is more than a little unfettered narcissism in this film. (I have to say though; he’s not the first narcissist to get off on saving the poor people of the developing world. Anyone hung around an international humanitarian organization recently?)
2. Are the factual inaccuracies all that significant? Yes, I know Uganda is technically part of the East African Community, not in Central Africa, but it is sort of in the middle, isn’t it? Yes, there is already major military intervention underway to find and arrest Kony. Sadly, it hasn’t been successful so far. Yes, the LRA is a very small band today, but they continue to kill and abduct, and they have never been brought to trial.
3. I would agree that the story is over-simplified, and yet the core is absolutely true. There is strong evidence that Joseph Kony personally planned and ordered systematic campaigns of terror (including murders, rapes, abductions, etc.). As a result he was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2005. His whereabouts are not known, and until he is apprehended he cannot be tried. How exactly this campaign will cause great harm is not clear to me? Will such enormous public pressure result in Obama sending an invading force to Uganda? Probably not!
   As for the “appropriation of African history and culture” suggestion, I assure you that Africans are not going to stop constructing and reconstructing our own historical narrative as a result of this or any other Western interpretation of our reality.
   
4. It’s old news? I hadn’t realized that there was now a statute of limitations on war crimes.
5. Educating the broader public about the abuse of human rights in the world has always been one of the core strategies of the human rights movement. When people download and share this video, we are achieving this aim. I’ve seen cynical responses saying, “Last week these weeping American teenagers couldn’t have found Uganda on a map”. My response is, EXACTLY! Surely this is a good thing.
6. Well lots of people make money out of human rights work – myself included. It’s a damn hard job that benefits society and I deserve to get paid for it. Invisible Children is a registered non-profit under Californian State law, there is an unqualified audit report (that is, there were no problems, not that the auditors lacked training), including financial statements on their website. When there is some clear evidence of fraud I’m sure the proper authorities will do their job.

So enough with the critiques and defence of KONY 2012. I am curious as to why, in the ocean of media about human rights, THIS film has “gone viral”.

These are my thoughts:

• It uses suspense and pace to catch and maintain the viewer’s attention;
• It tells the story in a very simple and yet fundamentally truthful way;
• It rests on simple, universal moral principles clearly articulated by a small child and an international expert;
• It uses a small child to win our affections and draws devastating comparisons to the lives of the children devastated by the LRA;
• It uses credible experts and they get to the point;
• It visually extrapolates from the personal to the multiple, thereby avoiding the banality of statistics but not ignoring the enormity of the crimes; and,
• It offers simple, manageable actions and shows how they might make a difference.

To go back to my first point, at least 32 million people know a little bit more about human rights, war crimes in this part of the world, the International Criminal Court, US foreign policy around war crimes, and a bunch of other stuff. That can’t be such a terrible thing. Have 32,000 people outside of the human rights movement ever read one of the MANY public reports written by the large international human rights agencies of the world? I suspect that at least some of the bitterness and cynicism may spring from the fact that we haven’t achieved this kind of public success in decades of work on public education and advocacy.

Perhaps we might take some tips on film-making from KONY 2012 and start to make better use of the new media options available to us. Make something that is more politically informed but make it in such a way that people get excited by it. If not there’s always plenty of room on the sidelines for those that wish to carp and criticize!

(Edited by Alan "Torch" McEwan Goss - original submission Friday, 9 March 2012, 05:42 AM)

I have often been frustrated when human rights organisations in some developing countries have categorically refused aid that comes from certain sources. My frustration arises when I am unable to do work that I believe is important and which seems to be highly valued by others, because my salary is paid in dollars. My frustration seems reasonable as long as one holds on to a picture of aid that comes from the well-heeled and well-meaning of the First World and goes to the innocent, poor, diseased and conflict-ravaged of the Third World. Sadly though this picture is seldom accurate! A closer look at the politics of aid quickly makes the actions of organisations that turn down certain monies seem both principled and smart.

A recent report from Oxfam, entitled "Whose Aid is it Anyway?" brings many of these issues into sharp focus. Some of the scary statistics included in the report are:

• Since 2002, one third of all development aid has gone to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. During this period, Iraq and Afghanistan alone have accounted for 40% of the global increase in aid provided by wealthy countries.
• Poorly conceived and executed projects aimed at "winning hearts and minds" have proved ineffective, costly and have damaged aid workerss credibility and security.
• In several Middle Eastern and African countries aid has been conditional upon cooperation with military forces and has been used to buy information and/or compliance.
• At times aid delivered through military structures have been much more costly that similar assistance provided through humanitarian structures.

These and other statistics make it very clear that aid is very often offered according to very narrow political and security agendas and is hardly at all about caring for the needy. This becomes particularly destructive when aid is delivered through military structures. Of course Oxfam make some broad recommendations around changing this state of affairs. But, until aid policy is consistently dictated by need and effective service delivery, many of the world's most vulnerable people will continue to tell wealthy nations what they can do with their "assistance". And all power to them!

Human Rights Watch have released their annual World Report 2011 documenting human rights abuse in more than 90 countries during 2010. The report does not try for any sweeping (and ultimately reductionist) conclusions about the state of human rights in the world. Instead the HRW researchers present a brief synopsis of the situation in each country listing significant themes and events. As such this report provides excellent reference material.

One theme worth noting is that of weak international leadership and response to repressive states around the world. This criticism is directed towards the world's most powerful states as well as the United Nations. Local readers might be interested to note that South Africa receives special mention as a country which promotes a vibrant democracy at home but is consistently unsupportive of international human rights initiatives. Of course Zimbabwe is the prime example, but it is certainly not the only one. This is tragic given the impact that international solidarity had on the protection of human rights in South Africa less than 20 years ago. How are we, as South African human rights activists, to encourage out government to take a stronger, more principled position in international affairs?

Download the full report.