Letters & Opinion
Uganda rebuilds
Co-Founder & Co-Executive Director
www.BeadforLife.org
Thanks for your story on the student group working with the Invisible Children organization. Unfortunately, either the reporter or the student group Invisible Children seem to have some of their facts wrong. The civil war and presence of Joseph Kony’s rebels ended over two years ago in Uganda. There is no active fighting here, although Kony remains active in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central Africa Republic where he continues to terrorize the local populations and is causing massive displacement. There is still much work to be done here in Uganda to reintegrate ex-child soldiers and rebuild communities, but to portray this as an active war is misleading. In fact, attention now also needs to be paid to the countries where Kony is active.
While I applaud the efforts of Invisible Children to get people involved in helping Uganda, there are literally hundreds of organizations working in Northern Uganda to help resettle people, assist children, provide income generation programs, work on agriculture, etc. Too often, press coverage of Africa in the US focuses on war, famine or other bad news, and rarely talks about the incredible capacity of local people to help them selves. I would love to see more Americans think about how to partner with Africans to provide real economic opportunities rather than doing “The Rescue” which implies Americans are somehow saving poor and helpless Ugandans. Similarly, focusing on a war that is no longer taking place in Uganda seems to be a scare tactic that helps get people involved, but doesn’t really educate people on the complexities of the actual situation.
If you would like more information, please feel free to contact me – I have lived and worked in Uganda since 2004.
www.BeadforLife.org
