Showing posts tagged africa

“Yoshua Alikuti” // The Very Best

thedailywhat:

African Stereotype of the Day: Gabriel, Benard, Brian, and Derrik, who live in Kenya, were inspired to poke fun at the way African men are portrayed by Hollywood: “If people believed only what they saw in movies,” they said, “they would think we are all warlords who love violence.” Mama Hope — an organization that partners with African organizations to help transform their communities — was more than happy to hand them a mic as part of a video campaign to “Stop the Pity, Unlock the Potential.”

Good stuff.

[boingboing]

(Reblogged from nsglobalstudies)

Gender Against Men

Gender Against Men exposes the hidden world of sexual and gender-based violence against men in the conflicts of the Great Lakes Region. The film demonstrates how male identities are under attack and how rape when used as a weapon of war affects husbands, fathers, brothers and the community.

The film is a production of the Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University. Winner of best documentary, Kenya International Film Festival 2009.

(Source: forcedmigration.org)

thenoobyorker: The White Savior Industrial Complex by Teju Cole [The Atlantic] If Americans want to care about Africa, maybe they should consider evaluating American foreign policy, which they already play a direct role in through elections, before they impose themselves on Africa itself. There’s no point in quoting the entire piece, just read it.   View high resolution

thenoobyorker:

The White Savior Industrial Complex by Teju Cole [The Atlantic]

If Americans want to care about Africa, maybe they should consider evaluating American foreign policy, which they already play a direct role in through elections, before they impose themselves on Africa itself.

There’s no point in quoting the entire piece, just read it.

 

(Reblogged from thenoobyorker)
“

As a Sudanese, I am concerned not because I would like foreigners to stay out of internal affairs, but because the view Clooney is presenting to the world is not an accurate one. This is not out of any deliberate manipulation on his part, but Clooney’s campaign is rooted in a political culture that does not care for nuance.

It all really goes deeper than the criticism aimed at his Enough Project, the Save Darfur campaign, or the “genocide paparazzi” satellite monitoring scheme – all of which are symptomatic of an overarching failure in US foreign policy, which promotes a black-and-white understanding of some situations, often underscored by moral superiority. After all, “Arabs are genocidally massacring blacks in the Nuba mountains” is far sexier and easier to digest than “the people of the Nuba mountains sided with the Southern People’s Liberation Movement during Sudan’s decades-long civil war between north and south, and after the secession of the south last year, a disgruntled SPLM candidate for governor lost what he believed were rigged elections and then took arms against the government in Khartoum in co-operation with the residual Nuba SPLM cadre, whose grievances had still not been addressed”.

Sudanese writer Nesrine Malik explains why George Clooney isn’t helping Sudan (via guardiancomment)

Relevant to most politics, but especially the politics of humanitarianism. Simple sells, but it’s not simple at all.

(Reblogged from abcsoupdot)
poptech: #UgandaSpeaks: Al-Jazeera uses Ushahidi to Amplify Local Voices in Response to #Kony2012 By Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi (PopTech 2010) Invisible Children’s #Kony2012 campaign has set off a massive firestorm of criticism with the debate likely to continue raging for many more weeks and months. In the meantime, our colleagues at Al-Jazeera have repurposed our previous #SomaliaSpeaks project to amplify Ugandan voices responding to the Kony campaign: #UgandaSpeaks. Other than GlobalVoices, this Al-Jazeera initiative is one of the very few seeking to amplify local reactions to the Kony campaign. Over 70 local voices have been shared and mapped on Al-Jazeera’s Ushahidi platform in the first few hours since the launch. The majority of reactions submitted thus far are critical of the campaign but a few are positive. Read more…

poptech:

#UgandaSpeaks: Al-Jazeera uses Ushahidi to Amplify Local Voices in Response to #Kony2012

By Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi (PopTech 2010)

Invisible Children’s #Kony2012 campaign has set off a massive firestorm of criticism with the debate likely to continue raging for many more weeks and months. In the meantime, our colleagues at Al-Jazeera have repurposed our previous #SomaliaSpeaks project to amplify Ugandan voices responding to the Kony campaign: #UgandaSpeaks.

Other than GlobalVoices, this Al-Jazeera initiative is one of the very few seeking to amplify local reactions to the Kony campaign. Over 70 local voices have been shared and mapped on Al-Jazeera’s Ushahidi platform in the first few hours since the launch. The majority of reactions submitted thus far are critical of the campaign but a few are positive.

Read more…

(Reblogged from poptech)
hitrecordjoe: Points worth considering re: the Kony debate… rtnt: RTNT On The Problems With KONY 2012 The deluge of social media attention that has been given to the simplistic KONY 2012 campaign and the surrounding haze of misinformation has reaffirmed our purpose at Read This, Not That. Joseph Kony is a warlord and a monster - this much cannot be denied. The present controversy swirls not around Kony himself, but rather around the substance of the campaign, and the intentions of the organization behind it: Invisible Children. Conversations are raging across the web between supporters and detractors - conversations that suffer, in many instances, from a lack of understanding about the current state of Uganda and of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (details of which are notably lacking from the film.) There has been much resistance to criticism of the campaign, resistance founded in knee-jerk reactions meant to defend the perceived good intentions of Invisible Children. The appearance of a noble cause to mask questionable action is not anomalous in our world. As such, it is our responsibility to be skeptical, especially when engaged with propagandistic media that aims to affect us emotionally and prompt a very specific reaction: in this case, to give money to Invisible Children. Our effort here is to offer articles that inform the debate surrounding KONY 2012 and to encourage everyone to embrace critical conversation, even when that gaze is directed at what appear to be good intentions. Things are rarely as simple as they are made out to be, and we can be sure that the state of Uganda and the LRA is not as simple as the KONY 2012 campaign makes it seem. Michael Wilkerson, writing for Foreign Policy, asks what the video is meant to accomplish: So the goal is to make sure that President Obama doesn’t withdraw the advisors he deployed until Kony is captured or killed. That seems noble enough, except that there has been no mention by the government of withdrawing those forces — at least any I can find. Does anyone else have any evidence about this urgent threat of cancellation? One that justifies such a massive production campaign and surely lucrative donation drive? TMS Ruge, writing for Project Diaspora, pleads with us to respect the agency of Ugandans: This IC campaign is a perfect example of how fund-sucking NGO’s survive…They are, in actuality, selling themselves as the issue, as the subject, as the panacea for everything that ails me as the agency-devoid African. All I have to do is show up in my broken English, look pathetic and wanting. You, my dear social media savvy click-activist, will shed a tear, exhaust Facebook’s like button, mobilize your cadre of equally ill-uninformed netizens to throw money at the problem. Ugandan Journalist Angelo Izama, writing at This Is Africa, finds KONY 2012’s portrayal of Uganda outdated: To call the campaign a misrepresentation is an understatement. While it draws attention to the fact that Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, is still on the loose, it’s portrayal of his alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era. Musa Okwanga, writing for The Independent, discusses the complexities the video left out: What the narrator also failed to do was mention to his son that when a bad guy like Kony is running riot for years on end, raping and slashing and seizing and shooting, then there is most likely another host of bad guys out there letting him get on with it.  He probably should have told him that, too. Guy Gunartne, writing for Codoc, questions the wisdom of Invisible Children’s preferred policy of military intervention: The LRA is reported to be 90% made up of abducted children – military defeat would mean engaging in combat and targeting of the very victims of this war; these children are the LRA. The author of Visible Children examines the armies on the other side of the war: Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. Glenna Gordon, who took the photograph above, takes issue with the filmmakers’ self-aggrandizement in this interview for The Washington Post: People who have lived there for years, bona fide aid workers who have studied foreign policy and other relevant fields like public health, who are really there because they are trying to solve problems — they see Invisible Children as trying to promote themselves and a version of the narrative.  Eric Ritskes, writing at Wanderings, reminds us that it is not about us: It falls into the trap, the belief that the problem is ignorance and the answer is education. When we tell more people about Kony and the LRA, something WILL happen. It’s not true…More education does not change the systems and structures of oppression, those that need Africa to be the place of suffering and war and saving…We need to learn: It’s not about us. Patrick Wegner, writing at Justice in Conflict, offers some final thoughts: To conclude, the Kony 2012 campaign is a reminder why we should see advocacy campaigns to interfere in conflicts with some scepticism, no matter how good the cause…. It also challenges us to think of ways how to design advocacy campaigns that mobilise many people without dumbing down the problem and its purported solution. We put in a lot of work reading, reviewing, compiling, and excerpting these pieces for you, and hope you will consider them in this debate. - The RTNT TeamFollow Read This, Not That on Tumblr / Facebook / Twitter  View high resolution

hitrecordjoe:

Points worth considering re: the Kony debate…

rtnt:

RTNT On The Problems With KONY 2012

The deluge of social media attention that has been given to the simplistic KONY 2012 campaign and the surrounding haze of misinformation has reaffirmed our purpose at Read This, Not That. Joseph Kony is a warlord and a monster - this much cannot be denied. The present controversy swirls not around Kony himself, but rather around the substance of the campaign, and the intentions of the organization behind it: Invisible Children.

Conversations are raging across the web between supporters and detractors - conversations that suffer, in many instances, from a lack of understanding about the current state of Uganda and of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (details of which are notably lacking from the film.)

There has been much resistance to criticism of the campaign, resistance founded in knee-jerk reactions meant to defend the perceived good intentions of Invisible Children. The appearance of a noble cause to mask questionable action is not anomalous in our world. As such, it is our responsibility to be skeptical, especially when engaged with propagandistic media that aims to affect us emotionally and prompt a very specific reaction: in this case, to give money to Invisible Children.

Our effort here is to offer articles that inform the debate surrounding KONY 2012 and to encourage everyone to embrace critical conversation, even when that gaze is directed at what appear to be good intentions. Things are rarely as simple as they are made out to be, and we can be sure that the state of Uganda and the LRA is not as simple as the KONY 2012 campaign makes it seem.

Michael Wilkerson, writing for Foreign Policy, asks what the video is meant to accomplish:

So the goal is to make sure that President Obama doesn’t withdraw the advisors he deployed until Kony is captured or killed. That seems noble enough, except that there has been no mention by the government of withdrawing those forces — at least any I can find. Does anyone else have any evidence about this urgent threat of cancellation? One that justifies such a massive production campaign and surely lucrative donation drive?

TMS Ruge, writing for Project Diaspora, pleads with us to respect the agency of Ugandans:

This IC campaign is a perfect example of how fund-sucking NGO’s survive…They are, in actuality, selling themselves as the issue, as the subject, as the panacea for everything that ails me as the agency-devoid African. All I have to do is show up in my broken English, look pathetic and wanting. You, my dear social media savvy click-activist, will shed a tear, exhaust Facebook’s like button, mobilize your cadre of equally ill-uninformed netizens to throw money at the problem.

Ugandan Journalist Angelo Izama, writing at This Is Africa, finds KONY 2012’s portrayal of Uganda outdated:

To call the campaign a misrepresentation is an understatement. While it draws attention to the fact that Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, is still on the loose, it’s portrayal of his alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era.

Musa Okwanga, writing for The Independent, discusses the complexities the video left out:

What the narrator also failed to do was mention to his son that when a bad guy like Kony is running riot for years on end, raping and slashing and seizing and shooting, then there is most likely another host of bad guys out there letting him get on with it.  He probably should have told him that, too.

Guy Gunartne, writing for Codoc, questions the wisdom of Invisible Children’s preferred policy of military intervention:

The LRA is reported to be 90% made up of abducted children – military defeat would mean engaging in combat and targeting of the very victims of this war; these children are the LRA.

The author of Visible Children examines the armies on the other side of the war:

Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission.

Glenna Gordon, who took the photograph above, takes issue with the filmmakers’ self-aggrandizement in this interview for The Washington Post:

People who have lived there for years, bona fide aid workers who have studied foreign policy and other relevant fields like public health, who are really there because they are trying to solve problems — they see Invisible Children as trying to promote themselves and a version of the narrative. 

Eric Ritskes, writing at Wanderings, reminds us that it is not about us:

It falls into the trap, the belief that the problem is ignorance and the answer is education. When we tell more people about Kony and the LRA, something WILL happen. It’s not true…More education does not change the systems and structures of oppression, those that need Africa to be the place of suffering and war and saving…We need to learn: It’s not about us.

Patrick Wegner, writing at Justice in Conflict, offers some final thoughts:

To conclude, the Kony 2012 campaign is a reminder why we should see advocacy campaigns to interfere in conflicts with some scepticism, no matter how good the cause…. It also challenges us to think of ways how to design advocacy campaigns that mobilise many people without dumbing down the problem and its purported solution.

We put in a lot of work reading, reviewing, compiling, and excerpting these pieces for you, and hope you will consider them in this debate.

 - The RTNT Team

Follow Read This, Not That on Tumblr / Facebook / Twitter 

(Reblogged from hitrecordjoe)

African voices respond to hyper-popular Kony 2012 viral campaign

This commentary is honestly what matters most in all the hype around KONY 2012. If you’re going to seriously try to understand this, this is where you need to be looking.

Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things)

Worth reading. Because yes, the situation is complicated, and yes, Invisible Children provides a fairly simple narrative that is problematic. I think they still do some good things, and can continue to do some good things, though.

Most people? Probably won’t care. They’ll probably shrug it off and continue with their lives, and that’s fine. Some people, though, might start to care and then hopefully will better educate themselves on the complexities of the situation (which is something I did, after participating in several IC events/campaigns — aside from social media sharing, though, I don’t participate any longer).

As previously mentioned, I’m not sure where I fall out on military intervention (“it depends”, and honestly, also requires a serious philosophical debate), but I don’t see the KONY 2012 campaign IC is running as a cut-and-dry issue on either side.

Also, there’s at least one thing everyone can probably agree on… IC is not stupid about the power of film and social media.

captainjhwatson: Since Uganda is getting a lot of interest on the internet right now, I figured it was important to try to present an alternative source of information. Invisible Children is, as many already know, a highly problematic organization, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying to help. Here are some other sources of information, statistics, and ways to donate/help. American Progress’s 2007 report, “What to Do About Joseph Kony” Amnesty International’s 2011 report on Uganda Global Security’s page on the Lord’s Resistance Army Washington Post, “A Child’s Hell in the Lord’s Resistance Army,” May 2006. HRW: “Protect civilians from LRA abuses,” May 2011 AllAfrica.com, “Amnesty International wants Kony arrested,” May 2010 AI’s Uganda Portal Human Rights Watch’s Uganda portal Democracy Now!’s Uganda portal View high resolution

captainjhwatson:

Since Uganda is getting a lot of interest on the internet right now, I figured it was important to try to present an alternative source of information. Invisible Children is, as many already know, a highly problematic organization, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying to help. Here are some other sources of information, statistics, and ways to donate/help.

(Source: earthsmightiestheroes)

(Reblogged from crookedindifference)