• First appearing on The Guardian, 19 April 2012, this 30-minute podcast features our Executive Director Andy Carl and Congolese peacebuilding partner Ernest Sugule.

The Kony 2012 campaign has brought unprecedented attention to Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and to the use of child soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army, the guerilla group he leads.

The slick, social media-savvy campaign calls for a military solution to the conflict and prioritises Kony's capture above all else. But can military intervention really succeed in such complex circumstances, or would less eye-catching approaches be more effective?

What needs to happen in the short term to stop the LRA, and in the long term to address the group's legacy and support affected communities?

To discuss these issues, Annie Kelly is joined in the studio by Andy Carl, director of NGO Conciliation Resources, and Amanda Weisbaum, programme director of NGO War Child. They're joined down the line from Kampala by Mahmood Mamdani, executive director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research.

We also hear from Richard Kavuma, editor of the Observer newspaper in Kampala and Ernest Sugule, a peace activist in the north-eastern area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The people who are shouldering the risks are not the Facebook users and the YouTube watchers, it is local communities.

Andy Carl on the military option promoted by the Kony 2012 campaign

Interested in the LRA conflict?

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