Feeling a little dejected...

Posted by Unknown on Monday, April 4, 2011
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As this is an academic exercise, I was very hesitant to bring personal feelings into this project. We were assigned a job to do: investigate Invisible Children and critique it using the ideas and theories we've learned in this course. Again, it isn't to question IC staff's personal integrity or character, it is to find out if their work is achieving their goal of helping Ugandans.

Culling the web for people's thoughts on IC, I'm struck by the amount of emotional 'feel-good' responses: "You've changed my life!" "I'm so excited to wear my T-shirt from IC." "I love you guys!!!!" from IC's Facebook page and Twitter feed.

But what disappointed me was the amount of intelligent criticism that is seemingly going unheard by IC and because of the way their flashy, entertaining, "take-it-in-but-don't-question-it" media is structured, by IC's audience as well.

From as early as 2006 (a year after IC's first big Global Night Commute campaign), people have been concerned about the ethics of commodifying a conflict and a whole nation. Their concern is that IC is appropriating the stories of Ugandans to sell their cause. Jedidiah Jenkins, whom we interviewed, thinks that people who protest IC's usage of MTV-esque videos and American music to tell stories of Ugandan children are essentializing these children into the stereotypical poor starving African children who don't know about these things (see his explanation in this segment of the interview).

The concern expressed by IC's critics actually seems to be the opposite. It's not that we don't think these kids are cool people who have their own musical tastes and can probably break dance better than any of us (when I was in Haiti, I found out that a lot of young Haitians love the Black Eyed Peas), it's more because these MTV-esque videos, designer websites, hipster culture blogs/tweets/music are distracting IC's North American audience, the average American teenager, from knowing if the money raised is really helping the local community. See this satire on African advocacy videos to see what I'm getting at about their videos.

DOING SOMETHING isn't always the best way to approach a humanitarian crisis. I think many cases in the past have shown us that. For example, Medecins Sans Frontieres famously withdrew from the Rwandese refugee camps in Tanzania and former Zaire (now the DRC) due to the exploitation of aid resources by the Hutu militia, many of whom were perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.

America's post-Rwanda guilt cannot be assuaged by acting rashly in Uganda and the DRC. Yes, when there are people hurt, in need of food, shelter, and protection, people instinctively want to help. That is not wrong. What wrong is rushing to oversimplified conclusions about the conflict, such as, Joseph Kony is the root of all of the evils happening in Uganda and the DRC and his arrest through international military intervention will end it all.

All aid agencies need to make it a priority to educate donors and to showcase their own professionalism. Better informed donors will make better funding decisions allowing your aid agency to be even more professional. However, if aid agencies continue to over simplify the issues and focus only on the emotional aspects then donors will continue to fund any aid agency that knows the formula, regardless of the quality of their work. To borrow an expression from the 60′s, if your aid agency is not part of the solution, they’re part of the problem. From goodintents.org.

We know the Ugandan government is corrupt and Museveni would love to keep the war going to pin everything on Kony. We know the DRC has a whole bunch of militant groups abducting children and marauding villages long before the LRA got there.

Hasn't someone noticed keeping the Joseph Kony villain myth alive keeps IC alive because they've put all their cards behind his capture? As long as he stays on the run, they can keep up the chase and exist as an organization. What's gonna happen when Kony IS captured? Are they going to go after the Ugandan government for all of its atrocities committed against the people, including forcing civilians into displacement camps and then not providing enough protection for those in these camps, subjecting them to rebel attacks, not to mention the rape of women and men by government troops? Will they go after the other rebel groups fighting in the DRC as well?

Will Invisible Children ever achieve its goal? Or will it keep reinventing itself to go after the next conflict, the next 'villain', the next 'victim' to package up and sell as a MEND bag or bracelet and DVD combo pack?

I really want to like IC. I really do. The trendy attire, the cool music, the freakishly good video-editing, it makes everything easy to swallow, makes you believe you can change the world simply by buying up all these items, telling everyone about it, and pressuring the government to capture Joseph Kony. Reality, on the other hand, is messy. It's convoluted. There are mixed motives and the blame doesn't always fall so squarely on one person, one group's shoulders. When will IC realize that the structural violence inherent in the Ugandan governing system is continually subjecting its people to low standards of living? Foreign funding to start a private school only gives the Museveni government an excuse not to fund universal education and public schools for primary and secondary school-aged children. Rather than continually funding these schools through money collected in the West, pressure Obama to pressure Museveni to start diverting its military budget to its education one.

I started this project hoping to leave off cynicism and anger and give these guys a chance. I don't deny that they've raised the visibility of Uganda. But my question is, at what cost (to the Ugandans and now to the Congolese)? Has it delayed peaceful resolution? Has it called the Ugandan government and UPDF into question as much as it has done to the LRA? It's been 5 years since they've started their work. Warning bells rang then and they were dismissed as cynics and snooty academics who sat in their ivory towers and didn't know 'reality' or they were dismissed as ignorant folk accusing IC of being a part of the uranium trade. Perhaps now it's the time for renewed efforts to document IC's work from an academic, research-based standpoint, to gather empirical data on IC's projects and campaigns and measure its impact (positive and negative) on the northern Uganda community BEFORE they venture too far into the DRC.

Another thing that's been bugging me is... What gives them the right to think they can just go into any country they want and change things up? I know atrocities are happening and people are dying, but what does it say about their self-perceptions to think that they can waltz into the DRC now that northern Uganda is at "peace". They are still casting the local population as victims waiting for them to arrive and save. This whole saviour-complex that we humans feel toward other humans is arrogant and ill-informed. It must be counter-acted by a humble examination of one's actions. Opening up its financial records to the Better Business Bureau would be a great start (see BBB link below).

Chris Blattman says it best in one of his replies to the Mission Director of IC:

There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. It’s often not an accidental choice of words, even if it’s unwitting. It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming. The saving attitude pervades too many aid failures, not to mention military interventions. The list is long.

One consequence, whether it’s IC or Save Darfur, is a lot of dangerously ill-prepared young people embarking on missions to save the children of this or that war zone. At best it’s hubris and egocentric. More often, though, it leads to bad programs, misallocated resources, or ill-conceived military adventures. There’s lots of room for intelligent advocacy.

There are a few other things that are troubling. It’s questionable whether one should be showing the faces of child soldiers on film. And watching the film one gets the sense that the US and IC were instrumental in getting the peace talks to happen. These things diminish credibility more than anything. Read more here.

More (critical) perspectives on IC and the West's pervasive saviour-complex, the idea that we can "save Africans". Read the comments too! The sad thing is that these are old articles (early 2010 is the latest post on IC directly. Yet I'm still not really seeing change in advocacy strategies or policy asks at IC...):

Granted, I know that comments on the Internet can represent the views of individuals, but there is a wide array of people here -- from people claiming to have worked with IC who come out with very different opinions of the organization to experts who have done years of research in the East African region or who are experts on humanitarian affairs and the international economy. Surely those are voices to be noted?

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