SAN DIEGO- On April 25th, Invisible Children, a media-based organization dedicated to ending Africa’s longest-running war is going global for their third and largest Awareness Event to date: a 100-city, nine country rally called the RESCUE, to demand attention for the plight of children abducted and forced to fight as soldiers in the Lord’s Resistance Army, terrorizing Central East Africa over the last two decades.

For 23 years, the region has been consumed by conflict. Despite a ceasefire called between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and Ugandan government, efforts toward peace were stalled on several occasions by Kony’s refusal to sign the final peace agreement. In early 2009, the Ugandan government and surrounding countries launched a military operation intended to defeat the LRA and capture the rebel leader. The LRA retaliated by murdering and displacing thousands of civilians, while abducting hundreds of children to fight amongst its ranks. A war originally contained within Uganda’s borders has now evolved into a widespread regional crisis, prompting massive international attention.

The RESCUE is a radically unique event, unlike Invisible Children’s previous events ‘Global Night Commute’ and ‘Displace Me’ that had 150 000 collectively sleeping in the streets across the country for the displaced people of northern Uganda. The RESCUE requires participants to ‘abduct themselves for the abducted’. Thousands of people will travel by foot to a location in each city that will become their ‘LRA’ base, where they will refuse to leave until a senator, politician or public figure ‘RESCUES’ them by making a public statement on behalf of child soldiers.

“It’s frightening that this war has now grown into an international crisis,” says Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children. “We need to respond with an international body of activists to increase the visibility of this conflict and end Joseph Kony’s reign of terror.”

The RESCUE began in February, with the launch of their world tour, to show their latest film The Rescue of Joseph Kony’s Child Soldiers as volunteer representatives took the film to schools, churches, concerts and coffee shops throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland with a call to action: be a part of history. ‘The Rescue’ profiles elusive rebel leader, Joseph Kony who has terrorized northern Uganda, and more recently the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and southern Sudan, igniting a new urgency for global attention. It also exposes groundbreaking testimonies from child soldiers, forced to fight amongst the ranks of the LRA. This powerful 35-minute piece of media serves as a worldwide catalyst to combat apathy and injustice, and empower a generation to take action towards a forgotten war. The World Tour continues until the RESCUE event occurs on April 25th.

The attention generated from their previous events widely contributed to the start of the peace talks. The political impact of this event is anticipated to be historical not only for northern Uganda and surrounding areas, but for the power of the new generation of activists.

Nine countries. 100 cities. One collective voice: bring the child soldiers home.