Today we have all been talking about Kony and International Women’s Day. For what it’s worth, here are my thoughts.
Firstly, Kony2012: this campaign has gone viral, and if you haven’t seen it yet, get out from under your rock and watch it. (Link provided at the bottom). The response has been unparalleled. News feeds have been jam packed with links to this video and haters have blogged, status updated and shared their opinions about the campaign.
In short – the advocacy to capture of Kony through military efforts, will implicate children abducted into the army. As a strong believer and advocate for nonviolence I hate this. Meeting violence with violence we will never establish true peace. The blood of the innocent will tarnish justice. But Kony will not agree to peace. Hundreds of thousands Ugandans, Sudanese, Congolese and citizens of the Central African Republic have been killed, mutilated and abducted by the man number 1 on the ICC register. What is our alternative? Should we turn away when we already know so much? In all the arguments, there is yet to be a practical alternative. In the meantime, innocence is suffering.
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| Alice Achan |
In 2010 I had the honour of visiting Northern Uganda for the first time. I met ex-child soldiers (one guy new Kony personally), women with mutilated lips and families’ still living in displacement camps, but it was the young women that changed my life.
Alice Achan, an Acholi women (the tribe of Northern Uganda) has given her life to see reconciliation and healing for the young women and children affected by 26 years of conflict. She is a pillar of light in the Pader region and her name Achan means Mercy. Alice runs a school for young women, many of whom are former sex slaves, which provides boarding, food, education, counselling and vocational training. There is even a nursery for their babies. This school highlights the importance of providing reconciliation and healing for those who have experienced hell under Kony’s army.
While the world gets behind the campaign to Stop Kony, we must consider the long term effects of this war on it’s people, and how it will end. When the LRA cleared out of Nth Uganda in 2008, so did most NGO’s and the UN. 3 million people were left to move back to destroyed homes and farms. They were left without proper sanitisation, food, medical facilities and education. Returning children were rejected from their communities because of the crimes they had ‘committed’. The Acholi people had relative peace, but peace was stunted because their needs weren’t met and they couldn’t access the healing and reconciliation they needed.
When the LRA are dismantled, children will possibly be returning home to villages destroyed, or families who reject them. Will we be tweeting and talking about reconciliation? Or are we all momentarily caught up in ‘ending a war’. How long and how far will our activism go?
Peace is tricky. It must be held lightly and understood from all angles. By removing Kony, we remove the source of the infection, but there will be traces throughout the body of poison. Civil society leaders like Alice stand as the hope for peace to nurture and grow in places like Pader. (Pader was the head quarters for the LRA for many years). We must identify these individuals and organisations that empower their own leaders, who know their culture, and get behind their efforts. The international community has a voice and has resources. Let us marry them up with those with the knowledge and the skills.
So happy International Women’s Day! I cannot think of any woman more deserving of accolade and praise than my friend Alice, and the beautiful women at her school who have survived Kony’s war.
To learn more about their work please check out these links and maybe even donate. (Sorry, you won’t get a cool bracelet to wear.
