Alas! They stopped. =(
Instead, there's a new follower.
Their Twitter led us to their Tumblr.
awareness4invisiblechildren.tumblr.com
And then this led us to their Facebook page.
It looked like it just got started recently. There weren't a lot of posts. What struck me was its first tweet:
Right now, any information on these sites can also be found verbatim (or close to) from IC official sites. Perhaps we're giving ourselves too much credit here, but I'm glad there seems to be a response to our questions. Even so, the issue of visibility and how a humanitarian or advocacy organization approaches it is a complex issue. Not only do the workers themselves need to be educated on the conflict's current on-the-ground progress, but also on the history of the conflict and the various actors involved. Not only that, it's the job of this organization to communicate all of this to the people they want to action from—us, here in Canada and the US, who can then pressure our policymakers to act on the international stage to protect the civilians who are being caught in the crossfire of this war.
Not an easy task. And to be fair, IC does a heck of a job with its use of new media, effectively galvanizing thousands upon thousands of people to participate in its campaigns.
But I feel it's still lacking something.
The actors involved in this conflict are many. And yet, in IC's newest campaign, "25" (campaign video embedded below), they are again essentializing the war down to one man, Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA. Don't get us wrong; we know the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has committed atrocities against the Acholi people of northern Uganda and are now doing the same as they moved into the Congo. However, as the readings in our course indicate, the Ugandan government forces have also committed atrocities against its people, often using force to demand civilian allegiance. That is something no one in the international community has been willing to address; no one is there pressuring the Ugandan government to recognize Kony's political power or try to broker peace talks between the LRA and the government. Until Kony gets the political legitimacy he desires as a leader of an already formidable force, he will not rest. And until the Ugandan government answers for its troops' atrocities upon the people or shares power, the LRA top leadership will not recognize the government's legitimacy to power.
For the Acholi and now the Congolese, they are trapped in the crossfire. Yet, at the same time, they are not without agency. We cannot look upon them as victims upon which suffering has happened. They are resourceful individuals who have learned to navigate the extreme social context of war. Many went into the bush because they were disgusted with the way the military treated its citizens (the actions of the tek gungu forces come immediately, however repulsively, to mind). On the other hand, many civilians joined the army to be upwardly mobile and to get a steady income, among other reasons.
The situation is not black and white. No one is a pure victim of another's actions when identities are so fluid. Each person needs to take responsibility for his or her own actions.
On top of that, the international community is thoroughly smitten with Museveni's progressive policies in the rest of the country, combatting HIV/AIDs and addressing gender equality. They (meaning US, Canada, the UK, and France) seem reluctant to speak too loudly against him for fear of destabilizing the Great Lakes region and probably out of a sense of relief that, compared to Rwanda, Uganda is doing all right for an African country. And that's the kind of essentialist attitude that's prevalent in all media. It pervades our thinking, as if Africa is just a monolithic entity with no diversity, just of war and poverty. We need to stop thinking like that.
1 comments:
Hi Linda,
I think you’ve nailed down one of the really important aspects in the discourse about Africa, regarding the problems of a single narrative. When I was reading some of the posts on IC’s Facebook, many people seemed to believe that Africa needs “our help” and we “have to help” them. Although media is an effective tool in spreading the urgency of the issues to the international community, this type of mainstream perception of Africa concerns me.
Yet I think the discourse of Africa is gradually shifting away from the predominant narrative due to the recent works by some scholars, including Dr. Dambisa Moyo, the author of Dead Aid, who emphasizes the significance of empowering the local resilience and capacities for self-sufficiency in Africa.
Another individual who challenges the representation and understanding of Africa from a single lens is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a novelist. In the TED Talks in 2009, Chimamanda argues that who tells the story matters because there is a relationship between storytelling and power. She concludes her talk by leaving us with a following message: “When we reject a single story, we regain a kind of paradise.” I hope our project would introduce a new point of view on issues in Africa! As you mentioned, we need to open our minds to the “diversity” or the stories of the people in Africa because each person’s experience is unique.
Here is the link to the TED Talks by Chimamanda Adichie: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html
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