Why invisible children is corrupt

The road was bad, and he drove slowly. Two LRA gunmen emerged from the bush and took him, at gunpoint, to their commander. But when he and I spoke privately, he said he was frustrated. After delivering the first batch of returnees to the FARDC outpost, he asked soldiers to put on civilian clothes and return with him to help transport the rest back. They refused, saying they were too scared. Dakiti continued alone, ferrying women and children back and forth.

When he finished, he was out of fuel. They declined. The cost is staggering. ICC investigators have been to Lukodi repeatedly to gather evidence. Mementos of their visits are stored in a small shed: a plaque, presented by ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, and poetry, tucked in cheap frames, that was coaxed from survivors by court-dispatched counselors.

Cost-benefit criticisms of the ICC are not new or novel. But the fact remains that the people of northern Uganda have many problems. Ditto for capturing Kony, who is reportedly holed up in the Kafia Kingi region of Sudan, some miles away from Gulu, with his few remaining followers.

As I prepared to leave Lukodi, Vincent Oyet, the local teacher, asked me to pay for his boda boda ride home. It was a fair request—I had asked him to meet me—even though I knew he would likely pocket the cash and walk home. He took the money and leaned back, his eyes focusing on some distant point between contentment and disbelief.

These people needed money. Billions of dollars had gone a lot of places. It had purchased plane tickets and assault rifles and espressos. In Lukodi, where the sun bakes the painted names of the dead on a crude memorial, it has purchased not very much at all. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. Skip to navigation Skip to content. Discover Membership. Editions Quartz. More from Quartz About Quartz.

Follow Quartz. These are some of our most ambitious editorial projects. From our Series. By David Gauvey Herbert. Yeah, for the most part. And it's super difficult to tell exactly what numbers mean because numbers, like statistics, are bendy like that.

It's just that, well, look at these production costs:. It's led people to believe that more money is being spent on filmmaking than on the actual cause of helping Ugandan children. That isn't good, because they also do plenty of bad things arrests, torture, killings, etc. Invisible Children also been accused of tampering with the stats they reported , inflating them. Foreign Affairs called it, "manipulated facts for strategic purposes.

Well, Invisible Children now has a post on their blog addressing the "critiques. They're also a charity and that means all of their financials are online for donors' perusal.

Well, that's up to you. The biggest criticism here isn't unlike what faced the Komen foundation earlier this year. It's a charity, it wants to do good things, but people are upset where the money is going and in this case, not knowing where all of the money is going. They also question if filmmaking is the best way to go about getting this done.

On the other hand, so many more people know about Kony than they did before, which is what they wanted and completely accomplished right? It's up to you, but if you want to donate to Invisible Children, head over here. Visible Children has their own list of charities, here. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. You, as a college student, have tremendous power to make change in the world.

Buying a bracelet from Invisible Children is not doing anything though. Yes, Invisible Children supports direct military intervention. After failed wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, even harping back to President Clinton initiating aid to Congo that resulted in, according to the Human Security Report Project, 5. They are choosing to support one of the most corrupt militaries in the world. The Ugandan military has violated human rights through the means of rape, torture and genocide like that of the Acholi people just like the man Invisible Children is trying to stop.

So, basically, Invisible Children is directly supporting a group that rapes citizens and murders children. If that comes off sounding a bit extreme, read the last paragraph again and tell me if it was anything but true.

Invisible Children countered on their website by saying that they also support the United States sending advisers to Uganda. Cue the Vietnam War.

He was seen in trying to make a peace bargain , and after that, he was last seen starving to death in the Congo. Why would Invisible Children be supporting a military in Uganda then? So what is this? A huge PR stunt, basically.