Jamaica Plain's Bikes Not Bombs: KONY2012's Violent Mission Isn't the Best Way to help Uganda

It's likely you've seen the viral video "KONY2012," which argues for a massive global effort to capture Central African warlord Joseph Kony. His rebel group is notorious for kidnapping children to turn the girls into sex slaves and the boys into child soldiers.

But Jamaica Plain-based , which has a program in northern Uganda, a region scarred by Kony's depradations, is critical of the video.

While Bikes Not Bombs applauds any effort made to educate the international community about the atrocities of the civil war in Uganda, we are concerned with the tactics prescribed in the viral video entitled KONY 2012, which was produced by the non-profit, Invisible Children.

Instead, Bikes Not Bombs advocates peaceful solutions that do not involve U.S. arming and advising the Ugandan military, as the video calls for.

In a post-colonial world, we must make extra effort to translate our good intentions into support that furthers the self-determination of the people we aim to help, rather than imposing our solutions on them. A military offensive to capture Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lords Resistance Army who has retreated into the Democratic Republic of Congo, is not a solution to the decades of ethnic and political repression of people in Northern Uganda.

Invisible Children has posted a detailed rebuttal to critiques of their approach.