Over the past month, we’ve celebrated five huge victories for the LRA mission. Five reports came in detailing different groups regaining freedom from LRA captivity – either escaping or being released by their commanders. We’ve never seen anything like this.
In less than 30 days, 85 people came home from the LRA. 85 real lives have been changed. For 85 people, this war is finally over.
Did you catch that number? EIGHTY-FIVE. It’s the largest group we’ve ever seen in this amount of time, since we started keeping track in 2008.
We’ve been sharing these reports with you over the last few weeks, in real time, as we received information from our team on the ground. So in case you missed some of them, you can catch up on the details from these past blogs:
Most of these are women and children, and most were released from long-term captivity in the LRA. That means the male combatants of a given LRA group voluntarily released the women and children from their group to safely surrender to a nearby community.
Ten of these 85 had only been abducted for a few weeks, but the rest had been in the LRA for as long as 14 years, and many of the children had lived their entire lives in the bush. These groups all come from different regions and have different stories, and they’re being taken care of by local security so they can return and reintegrate into their communities. Our team in the field is investigating the potential implications and LRA strategy of these new, mass releases. What we do know is that 85 people now live in freedom and safety, and that’s definitely something to celebrate.
A few weeks ago, you all contributed $13,500 to our Flash Action campaign. Because of you, our team has been creating audio defection messages from the released women and children, and we’re broadcasting these messages to the male LRA members still in the bush, to encourage them to also surrender.
The past month has been so significant and such a big victory. News like this is why we work, why we fight, why we dance, and why we create. It’s why we stop at nothing.
Two years ago, the world came together, took notice, and took a stand against Joseph Kony’s atrocities. And we’re finally seeing big results, even if they’re not trending on Twitter. This war will end, and our mission isn’t over until every LRA member returns home.
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