The evolution of international efforts to stop a brutal insurgency in Central Africa could offer important lessons for preventing mass atrocities, especially at a time when international norms and systems are fraying. Between 2011 and 2017, targeted U.S. support – spurred by bipartisan members of Congress – helped African partners significantly reduce ongoing atrocities by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda and the wider region. Most importantly, U.S. engagement catalyzed community-based early warning and early response networks (EWERNs). These locally-led initiatives are still ongoing and helping protect communities in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions.
At the start of this century, the LRA and its notorious leader, Joseph Kony, were responsible for some of the most horrific atrocities on the globe. The LRA infamously filled its ranks by abducting an estimated 25,000 children and forcing them to become child soldiers or sex slaves. Journalists documented tens of thousands of child “night commuters” walking daily from their rural homes to sleep on town streets to avoid the LRA’s predation. One UN leader called the situation in northern Uganda “the world’s biggest neglected crisis.” Over time, under pressure from the Ugandan military, the LRA shifted its operations to even more remote areas of Central Africa.
In response to bipartisan legislation passed by Congress in 2010, then-U.S. President Barack Obama announced a strategy to help stop the LRA’s atrocities and assist people displaced from their homes by violence. He deployed a small number of U.S. Special Forces to assist an African-led effort to capture Kony and other senior commanders. Building off the experience of peacebuilders in northern Uganda, U.S. and African partners employed radio broadcasts, aerial loudspeakers, and aerial leaflet drops to encourage defections from the group. Thousands of former fighters peacefully defected, abductees were reunified with families, and LRA violence plummeted.
Today, the LRA threat is the weakest it has ever been. The LRA killed one civilian and abducted 282 people from 2020 to 2024, compared to 974 killings and 3,587 abductions between 2010 and 2014, according to a report last year. There are no longer any civilians displaced by LRA violence, though Central African communities remain vulnerable to other armed groups.
The work of U.S Special Forces certainly contributed to this reduction of LRA violence, but U.S. support to strengthen pre-existing, locally led protection initiatives has yielded an even more significant and sustainable impact over time. With U.S. funding, Invisible Children (an organization with which we both are connected) adapted and scaled community-based atrocity prevention and peacebuilding efforts to help hundreds of vulnerable communities in Central Africa.
Specifically, Invisible Children and community partners established local peace committees and connected them to each other by developing an innovative EWERN using high-frequency radios and mobile phones. They have recently integrated emerging telecommunications such as Starlink. The EWERN now connects more than 170 communities across four countries and helps them assess and prepare for evolving threats. Over the years, it has documented thousands of attacks on civilians and helped local peacebuilders implement thousands of strategies to prevent and respond to violence and intercommunal tension.
In a 2023 survey, 91% of community representatives within the EWERN’s area of operations reported an improved sense of community security and reduced inter- and intra-community conflict. Like the heralded Emergency Response Rooms in Sudan, these kinds of local networks are resilient and can still continue operating when insecurity shuts down the activities of international aid organizations. With fewer resources, support for innovative local networks like these offers a promising model for international actors seeking to support atrocity prevention.
These local networks develop self-sustaining response mechanisms and address barriers to economic activity. For instance, peace committees in Sudan have used the proceeds from income-generating activities to support displaced persons cut off from international humanitarian aid. In the Central African Republic, youth peacebuilders have used mobile cinema workshops and other creative methods to reduce tensions between farmers and herders and enable mutually beneficial market activity. These initiatives leveraged U.S. government support, but ultimately originated with and will be sustained by local peacebuilding and protection networks.
Today, it is almost impossible to imagine the United States or another major international actor embarking on an atrocity prevention initiative as ambitious as the counter-LRA campaign. Foreign aid budgets are being slashed, and foreign policy priorities are being reframed around national self-interest. In fact, U.S. funding supporting the EWERN was cut last year. But the lessons from this effort suggest that even small amounts of international support for locally led prevention and protection efforts can make a difference and withstand disruptions. That support can yield significant results when it is targeted, localized, and allows communities the freedom and flexibility to catalyze existing assets to respond to everyday barriers to peace.
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About the Authors
Paul Ronan is the director of programs and policy at Invisible Children and co-manages the Crisis Tracker conflict mapping initiative. Peter J. Quaranto is a visiting professor of the practice and distinguished global policy fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, and serves on Invisible Children’s board of directors.
Recommended Citation
Ronan, Paul and Peter J. Quaranto. “The Power of Local Networks in Preventing Atrocities: Lessons from Central Africa.” Peace Policy: Solutions to Violent Conflict, No. 64, (April 2026). https://doi.org/10.7274/32108533
