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Senate passes defense bill with new LRA provision

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On Dec. 4th, the US Senate passed next year’s defense authorizations bill after adding a new provision urging sustained commitment for efforts to help end LRA atrocities. The amendment was introduced by Senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Chris Coons (D-DE), who chairs the Africa Subcommittee. It passed unanimously. The full text is below.

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed his support when the amendment went for a vote. According to the official Congressional record, Levin commended Senators Inhofe and Coons and added, “The determination to go after Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army is essential not just in terms of the values that we so dearly believe in, but also in terms of avoiding further slaughter that has been perpetrated by Kony.”

The amendment was added just a week after more than 700 activists from across the country met with their representatives in Congress as part of MOVE:DC, the culminating event of the KONY 2012 campaign.

A second provision in the final bill specifically authorizes new funds for surveillance tools that help locate LRA groups. We wrote about it when it was added in June. Before becoming law, this legislation must first be reconciled with a version passed earlier this year by the House of Representatives that did not include either of the two LRA-related provisions.

SEC. 1246. EFFORTS TO REMOVE JOSEPH KONY FROM POWER AND END ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY.

Consistent with the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009 (Public Law 111–172), it is the sense of the Senate that—
(1) the ongoing United States advise and assist operation to support the regional governments in Africa in their ongoing efforts to apprehend or remove Joseph Kony and his top commanders from the battlefield and end atrocities perpetuated by his Lord’s Resistance Army should continue;
(2) using amounts authorized to be appropriated by section 301 and specified in the funding table in section 4301 for Operation and Maintenance, Defense-wide for ‘‘Additional ISR Support to Operation Observant Compass’’, the Secretary of Defense should provide increased intelligence, s urveillance, and reconnaissance assets to support the ongoing efforts of United States Special Operations Forces to advise and assist regional partners as they conduct operations against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa;
(3) United States and regional African forces should increase their operational coordination; and
(4) the regional governments should recommit themselves to the operations sanctioned by the African Union Peace and Security Council resolution.