Joseph Kony (born September 1961) is a Ugandan militant and warlord who founded the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Peacekeepers.
According to former LRA fighters, Kony’s stated goal is to overthrow President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and create a state based on Kony’s interpretation of the biblical Ten Commandments. Since the LRA no longer operates in Uganda, the group’s current political goals are not clear. Kony’s current tactics appear solely aimed at ensuring his and other senior leaders’ survival.
An Acholi, Kony served as an altar boy in his childhood. After the Ugandan Civil War, Kony participated in the subsequent insurgency against president Yoweri Museveni under the Holy Spirit Movement or the Uganda People's Democratic Army before founding the LRA in 1987.
Aiming to create a Christian state based on dominion theology, Kony directed the multi-decade Lord's Resistance Army insurgency. After Kony's terror activities, he was banished from Uganda and shifted to South Sudan.
Kony has long been one of Africa's most notorious and most wanted militant warlords. He has been accused by government entities of ordering the abduction of children to become child soldiers and sex slaves.
Approximately 66,000 children became soldiers, and 2 million people were displaced internally from 1986 to 2009 by his forces. Kony was indicted in 2005 for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, but he has evaded capture.
Kony and two senior LRA leaders also sought on ICC arrest warrants—Okot Odhiambo —are believed to be in the Central African Republic. They and their forces are highly mobile, and it is difficult to know their exact whereabouts.
Kony and other LRA leaders move on foot in small separate groups with their fighters and abductees through remote bush terrain between the borders of Congo, CAR, and South Sudan. They do not have
permanent camps, avoid roads and often make great efforts to cover their tracks.
The LRA leaders used to communicate by satellite phone and two-way radios but no longer do so for fear their locations will be identified through monitoring. Instead they send messages via runners, letters posted on trees or left under rocks, or occasional face-to-face meetings at pre-determined locations in isolated areas.
By April 2017, Kony was still at large, but his force was reported to have shrunk to approximately 100 soldiers, down from an estimated high of 3,000. Both the United States and Uganda ended the hunt for Kony and the LRA, believing that the LRA was no longer a significant security risk to Uganda. As of 2022, he is reported to be hiding in Darfur.
