IC CEO Ben Keesey speaks on White House “never again” panel
April 23, 2012 by Azy Groth
This morning, after the event at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, there were a series of panels at the White House on the topic of “Honoring the Pledge of ‘Never Again.’”
Invisible Children’s CEO, Ben Keesey, was on a panel that discussed social media and technology.
Panel Discussion: Modern Tools for an Ongoing Challenge
Moderator: Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation, U.S. Department of State, with panelists:
- Sam Gregory, Program Director, WITNESS
- Jon Hutson, Satellite Sentinel Project
- Ben Keesey, CEO, Invisible Children
- Don Steinberg, Deputy Administrator, USAID
Some of the most interesting questions of the day were raised by students. While the questions couldn’t possibly be fully addressed in such a short time, they brought up important issues for further conversation.
For example, one person asked the panel about the potential harm of information and its spread through social media. We’ve seen students in Egypt use it for freedom and the Syrian regime use it for oppression.
Another member of the audience asked what social media could accomplish besides raising awareness. To which Jon Hutson responded that it can, and should, be used as a tool of accountability. The more people who are watching, the harder it is to shirk a mandate or abuse power. Not impossible, but more difficult.
Another person observed that victims of mass atrocities generally have less access to the technology where the conversations about mass atrocities are taking place. Instead, the conversations are dominated by outsiders of one sort or another. What can be done to bring forth the viewpoints of those directly affected?
These are important questions that we at Invisible Children have long considered and talk about often. It was great to see more youth engagement on this topic, and we were honored that Ben Keesey was invited to join this conversation at the White House.
If a video is made available, we will post it here. For sure.
-Azy
Update: Video is now available:
3 thoughts on “IC CEO Ben Keesey speaks on White House “never again” panel”
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Ben Keesey did an impresseive job representing IC. I was also pleased to see how much the topic of the LRA was discussed in the briefing. Progress!
AMAZING. completely amazing. “to end the scourge that is the LRA…”
Having spent several years in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan working on humanitarian missions, I’ve seen first hand the atrocities committed by this madman – I do believe he is both mad and evil, having been corrupted by the power over life or death. Having got away with it with impunity for so long, he probably believes he has special powers, (especially as the LRA originated from a group founded by Kony’s cousin, Alice Lukwena, who was clearly psychotic, but who claimed to be a spirit medium. In 1986, she led her followers into battle against the government, saying her special oils would protected them from bullets , turning them into water. Most of them were armed with only stones, but because she got lucky a few times early on, they believed it was a miracle & she gained even more support. However they were eventually defeated and she escaped to Kenya where she remained in exile until she died from a long illness in 2007. Before her death, she was accused of trafficking children from Gulu in 2004, and claimed to have found cures for several diseases, including HIV/AIDS).
Kony took over with his Lords Resistance Army, who for the past 26 years have committed the most awful atrocities against humanity – women and children raped – padlocks put on their vaginas afterwards with the grim warning that he will come back and open them up when he wants more. Even babies don’t escape -one of my most harrowing memories is of the shock and bewilderment in the eyes of a 2 year old in Kalongo Hospital. She clung to me, but she was unnaturally silent for a child of that age. Her family had been killed by the same LRA soldiers who had raped her.
I saw numerous mutilations – Kony’s trademark is to emerge from the bush & attack innocent people as they are walking or cycling along the road cutting off their noses, lips and limbs before moving on to the next person. Little childrens drawings in those regions are not of the usual happy smiling faces of their families, but pictures of men in camouflage uniforms, of guns and pangas, their families lying on the ground covered in blood.
Kids are abducted & brainwashed. They are forced to beat other children to death as part of the initiation into Kony’s army. Crying & frightened, they are warned that they will be killed themselves if they refuse. Later they are taken back to their own villages & forced to attack their own families & neighbours.
I’ve spent nights at Gulu & Kitgum Hospitals – where as soon as the sun starts to set, hundreds of people leave their homes & migrate in fear to the relative security of the hospital grounds with their whole families to spend the night.
I’ve seen valuable crops, cultivated in N. Uganda & S. Sudan in the most difficult of conditions to feed families & even cooperatives – stolen overnight, as well as the looting of shops, and personal food stores- all to feed Kony & his mob.
I myself have cowered in corners when the shooting and shelling has been going on all around Kitgum, lighting up the sky like bonfire night (as the film said, Kony is not a man of his word- he even hit the ICRC compound after promising them immunity, so we, who had no such agreement, were as vulnerable as any of the locals).
I’ve been stuck in Northern Uganda unable to take vital food & medicines to my medical & nutritional programmes in Southern Sudan, (and also been trapped in Southern Sudan unable to leave during Antonov and MIG bombings by the Government of Sudan) due to Kony’s activities- including landmines in the road between the 2 countries. I’ve travelled terrified along that road, mile after mile, praying that all the mines have been found and cleared and that we won’t be ambushed….
But I’m lucky- I was there through choice & only stayed for 3 years. The people in that region have had to endure Kony’s brutality for more than 25 years & nothings changed. He just crosses borders to brutalise new people for a while until the heat dies down. Despite this should be easy to catch him if the will is there. If there was oil or some other commodity at stake, he would have been caught by now. Just like the situation in S. Sudan, I can’t help feeling it suits the American government to maintain an unstable equilibrium sometimes…
Thank god for the Kony 2012 / Invisible Children initiative. These good folk are really making a difference and forcing governments to act through people power. So hopefully Kony will finally be caught & stopped!
The people I met in both N. Uganda & S. Sudan are such good people – hard working, resilient and community spirited, despite such difficult lives. I pray for success for their sakes.