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Tracking the Lord’s Resistance Army in Real-Time

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Tracking the Lord’s Resistance Army in Real-Time

Posted by Enough Team on September 29, 2011

Tracking the Lord's Resistance Army in Real-Time

Editor's Note: Michael Poffenberger, co-founder and executive director of Resolve, wrote this guest blog about an unprecedented new tool that will virtually track the activities of the LRA and provide a comprehensive overview of attacks on the ground.

In December of 2009, during what is now known as the Makombo Massacres, the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, killed 321 civilians in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite the incredible scale and brutality of the violence, the international community did not learn of the massacre until March 2010—a full three months later.

Today, Enough Project partner organizations Resolve and Invisible Children are announcing the launch of the LRA Crisis Tracker, a tool built in the belief that the response time to LRA atrocities should be three hours, not three months.

 

Live right now at LRACrisisTracker.com, this project features the most comprehensive public map of LRA atrocities in the world, in-depth analytical reports of LRA Crisis Tracker data, videos with survivor testimony, and even a live Twitter feed of LRA activity. Data is fed into it from real-time reports generated by the United Nations, a community-run early warning radio network, and field research from groups like the Enough Project and local civil society organizations. After coding LRA attack data from December 2009 onward, our team discovered that four of every five attacks recorded in the LRA Crisis Tracker have never before been reported publicly.

More than recording past and present history, the LRA Crisis Tracker equips activists to help determine the next chapter of this conflict. For the first time, current evidence of the LRA’s continuing atrocities are in one place, open to the public. With near real-time data, the LRA’s brutal rampage through central Africa cannot be denied. 

That is leverage that will be useful this fall, as we call on President Obama to follow through with his strategy for ending LRA atrocities released last November.

Be one of the first to check out the site live now at LRACrisisTracker.com.