Kony 2012 Corrupt? | St Albans School News Report

There has been a social networking outbreak over one man – Joseph Kony. So far on Twitter there have been 57,000 retweets of P Diddy’s post stating ‘We will stop YOU’. In addition to this, a feature video on YouTube has received over 78.6 million views and over six million people on Facebook have shared the story. The main Campaign, having started in 2012, is based around an attempt to having Kony placed higher up the CIA most wanted list, so that it can recieve more funding and he can be brought to justice. The hope of campaigners is that the propaganda will, in effect, force the CIA to provide more funding into finding Kony, although it is probable that the CIA are provided in the funding (so far having reached $1 million) in an attempt to draw America’s attention to Kony’s actions in Uganda which should secure public opinion on Kony in favour of the U.S.

Due to most of the campaigning being done via social networking sites, many supporters of the campaign are of the younger generation. The big question is whether the majority of supporters are actually thinking about where the money it raises is going – is it actually going to finding Kony or is it funding other secret services investigations. On speaking to a year nine pupil at St. Albans School, we found that many people of that age range immediately believed that all money based donations would be going towards finding Kony. This is a stark contrast from reality as much of the $13, 765, 177 of revenue is going towards furthering awareness, and funding salaries and programs in Africa – rather than finding Kony himself. From these figures, would it be fair to say that this campaign could be misleading and slightly corrupt? From the view of finding Kony, it would be very difficult. So much so, that rumours suggest it would be more challenging to find Kony than it was to find Al Queada leader, Osama bin Laden. This means that despite any additional funding from the viral campaign, it would almost certainly take many years and millions of dollars to find him – not soon enough for the children who will suffer by the hand of his actions. Joseph Kony has been leading a group known as the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) in Uganda since 1989. In all that time there have been many efforts to try and find him, all of which have failed. For this campaign to work, it will need a great deal of funding and a lot of time – social networking could be the key for the funding but finding him is down to those who receive the money. As we have seen, the final destination of the contributions is questionable. Due to Kony being rumoured by Ugandan supporters to be ‘unkillable’ meaning that we may not receive much assistance in finding him – another difficulty to overcome.

Since Kony has been in charge of the LRA, he has used 66,000 children as soldiers, forcing them to see things which “no child should have to see” according to the main man behind the campaign, Jason Russell. This army has been the main barrier between us and Kony as many of his fighters are not old enough to know anything about his whereabouts. It seems that if we are to raise enough money, the definition of viral campaigning will be virtually rewritten as the amount of people and money will be far beyond any social networking campaign prior to this event. But it is clear from Kony’s many war crimes and massacres that he must be found – whether by corrupt means or not.