Who is Joseph Kony? The altar boy who became Africa's most wanted man

Joseph Kony addresses journalists in southern Sudan in November 2006. [AFP]

Eleven years ago, a documentary catapulted the name Joseph Kony onto the global stage. The controversial film Kony 2012 told the story of a Ugandan warlord whose forces are believed by the United Nations to be responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 people, the abduction of at least 20,000 children and the displacement of more than two million people.

Though most of the world hadn’t heard of Kony before then, Ugandans knew and feared him. The founder of the Lord’s Resistance Army unleashed a wave of violence across northern Uganda for two decades.