Invisible Children boss Ben Keesey hits back at Kony video critics

The organisation behind a video calling for the arrest of Ugandan militia group leader Joseph Kony has defended the way its high-profile campaign has been presented, amid questions over how its activities are funded.

Speaking exclusively to Yahoo News!, Ben Keesey, the CEO of San Diego-based Invisible Children, hit back at claims that the non-profit group had offered an oversimplified picture of the situation in a 30-minute video that has racked up more than 46m YouTube views since it was posted just four days ago.

In the video filmmaker and co-founder of Invisible Children Jason Russell travels to northern Uganda, urging those watching to help make Kony "famous".

Kony heads up the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) - a rebel group notorious for kidnapping children and forcing them to fight.

The campaign has seen a huge wave of support on Twitter and Facebook, with tweets about Kony under hashtags #Kony2012 and #stopkony becoming global trending terms.

But critics have said the video oversimplifies the situation, creating an illusion that posting messages on social media could have a meaningful impact on a long-standing human rights crisis.

Kony is believed to have long since fled Uganda for South Sudan or the Central African Republic and is now believed to have only a few hundred followers.

Keesey told Yahoo News!: "Invisible Children has been telling the story of the LRA since 2003. We were really proud of the film.

"A lot of people in academia have had a hard time understanding how Invisible Children's message has resounded with so many people.

"Using a narrative that isn't overly complex as some of the other journals and pieces about the LRA is helpful."

Invisible Children's public financial records have also been heavily scrutinised since the Kony video went viral. The balance sheet for 2011 indicates that only 32 per cent of the money raised last year went towards charity work, with the rest ploughed into staff salaries, film production and travel costs.

Keesey claimed 37% of Invisible Child's expenditure in 2011 was dedicated to direct action on the ground.

He explained: "General donations follow a roughly one-third, one-third, one-third category.

"The first third is the creation of film and the documenting of the atrocities and the digital media that we use to display that.

"The second third is the movement - the mobilisation of the international community, the advocacy both at the international level and the domestic level... and the grass-root tours we do.

"Then the third section is the direct work on the ground."

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Tom Cargill, assistant head of Africa program at Chatham House, a British-based think tank, said: "It's not a new message but it's done very well in attracting a lot of attention very quickly.

"Its aim is obviously to influence U.S. policy ahead of the (U.S. presidential) election but I'm not entirely sure it's going to do that. Even if they do put more resources into finding Kony, he's proved very adept at evading attempts at capture before."

The campaign is supposed to culminate on April 20, when Russell urges supporters of the movement to "blanket every street, every city."