Kony 2012: Child Soldiers In Uganda

For over twenty years Joseph Kony and his followers have been kidnapping the children of Uganda. They have become known as child soldiers and are forced to fight for the LRA or Lord’s Resistance Movement (“Lord’s”). The future generation of Uganda is diminishing due to child soldiers. These children are being stripped of their old beliefs, tortured, and are forced to live with the psychological trauma, if they do survive. The LRA began in the early 1980’s as a spiritual movement. A women named Lakwena believed that the Holy Spirit told her to overtake the Ugandan government. It quickly gained support, but was not able to overthrow the government, and Lakwena was thrown out of the country. Joseph Kony took Lakwena’s place in 1986. He believed

Many focus on raising money in order to house, feed, educate, and provide medical assistance to those who have escaped Kony. A very large, well known organization “Invisible Children”, started the Kony 2012 campaign. This campaign started with a graphic video of the child soldiers and what is happening in Uganda. Over 100 million people viewed the video in the first three days, starting an uproar of support to stop Kony and the LRA. With many donations and pledges from people around the world “Invisible Children” has created many programs to rescue current soldiers and protect free children from being captured. To help the already captured to escape “Invisible Children” releases fliers that guarantee safety and show pictures of other escapees. These fliers are released over the forest in Northern Uganda where many LRA camps can be found. They also use helicopter speakers and FM radios to relay come home messages to soldiers. These messages are meant to reach groups and individuals of the LRA deep in the forests of Uganda, encouraging surrender and escape. These messages encouraged 89% of the escapees. In order to help other communities from losing their children and being attacked other broadcasting networks allow them to report LRA activity in advance. This has protected 85 communities in Uganda so far. Although Kony has still not been defeated, because of the help of programs like “Invisible Children”

They have been taken from their families and are forced to fight. Others, especially girls, are forced to be sex slaves, and are raped repeatedly. If a person will not do something willingly then they should not have to do it. Another violation is Article 18:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Unlike Article 4 this article is a mental right (“United”). As it says everyone has a right to their own thought, the children lose this right as soon as they are captured scared into believing and doing whatever they are told by the LRA. The children 's prior religions are forced out of them by condoning the religious practices. These children no longer have control of their own minds or body. Kony has manipulated and violated these children’s human rights, making them into his idea of perfect