Media and Peacebuilding - Concepts, Actors and Challenges: Working Paper

Introduction

1. Objectives of report
   
   While recognizing the destructive role media have played in many conflicts, clearly seen in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and holding in mind the potential of free and independent media for fostering democracy, international organizations and NGOs have concluded that media have a crucial role to play in peacebuilding.
   
   
   

   Starting in the nineties, this has led to major media interventions in conflict-prone or transitional regions (Africa, Balkans and Central Asia). Many actors were involved -- from international organizations and bilateral donors, to local and specialized media NGOs -- with a broad spectrum of activities -- ranging from training to provision of equipment, from launching media regulation initiatives to enhancing professional associations, fromsupporting individual media to transforming former state radios into public service broadcasters.
   
   
   

   The interest for media's role and its impact on peacebuilding is rising. Against this background, the government of Switzerland is reflecting on how media can become a core theme in its peacebuilding efforts.
   
   
   

   Therefore, this report summarizes the basic concepts of media and peacebuilding. It focuses on media assistance in conflict regions, mainly in a short- to a medium-term perspective. It aims to:

   • present a clear picture on the concepts
   • provide an overview of the strategies applied by different actors
   • highlight the actual trends and future challenges.




2. Definitions
   
   Media: will refer to all types of print media such as newspapers and magazines as well as electronic media (including radio and TV programmes). This definition will exclude theatre, school and other educational institutions.
   
   Journalism: covers all activities conducted by journalists, reporters and editors. It is not limited to "news" journalism or "news agency" journalism; it includes all types and formats of reporting (larger stories, analysis, background features, comments, opinions), editing (selection of news, controlling), and designing programmes (formats, series, supplements).
   
   Peacebuilding: is seen in the strict sense, used by peace research, "The overall aim of peacebuilding is to prevent violent outbreaks of conflicts or to transform violent conflicts in a sustainable manner into peaceful means." The specific aims vary according to the different phases, i.e. pre-conflict, open conflict or post-conflict situations.
   
   Media and Peacebuilding:this report will deal mainly with media in the socio-political sphere -- especially in the pre-, ongoing or post-conflict phase -- not with media in development sectors such as health, agriculture, HIV campaigning or rural radios. However,the long-term perspective of media assistance, for example supporting good governance, is included, as it plays a role for strategy and project design in the different conflict phases.





3. Justification of media intervention
   
   The Balkan and African atrocities in the 1990s have encouraged a growing consensus that preventing hate speech, ethnic cleansing and genocide activities are justifications for external intervention. However, the legal questions around international humanitarian intervention with coercive power remain a complicated and heavily discussed issue. 2 As this report will focus on media actors and activities these legal considerations will not beaddressed further.
   
   
   

   In contrast, for media intervention, the commonly acknowledged justification is, "to promote the fulfilment of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Article 19 states, "Everyone has the right to the freedom of opinion and expression; this rightincludes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Although mainlyreferred to as journalists' or editors' rights, whose freedom is restricted in many countries, Article 19, nevertheless, must also be read as the recipients' right to "receive" information.
   
   
   

   Against this background, various NGOs stress that access to information is a human right and not a privilege. This "recipients' right" would not only apply to humanitarian crisis, when information to the affected population becomes equally essential as food, water orshelter, but also to any under-developed situation with poor media environment and infrastructure.
   
   
   

   For peacebuilding activities, there might be other justifications; the use of media as a tool for peacebuilding might be based on additional grounds as the ones mentioned. According to the relationship between the respective countries, the activities of external actors orexternally funded assistance in the field of media and peacebuilding may be based on contracts of cooperation between governments or on international mandates in the context of peace operations.
   
   
   

   In a similar light, media assistance in development cooperation is based on inter-governmental contracts. Many donors see "free and pluralistic media" as an important pre-condition for democracy and good governance. It is therefore incorporated as a condition for, and as part of, development cooperation.





4. Clarifications
   
   Diversity of activities
   
   There is a wide variety of actors, including all major donors, international broadcasters and specialized media NGOs, all of whom employ and initiate different approaches and programmes. This kaleidoscope of actors and activities results in a challenge to form a coherent picture. In many countries, the picture becomes further agitated as media projects are run by different organizations and quite often there is no clearing established between their activities. Regarding only the media projects of governments, they are frequently run by different departments or under different programmes. For example, the funding of a journalist training might be supported under the title of "good governance" (within development cooperation), from a special programme for "freedom of expression" or "human rights" of the foreign ministry, or be funded by the "conflict prevention" programme of an NGO funded by another department of the same ministry.
   
   
   

   Media activities can also take the form of objectives, for example the establishment of a free and independent media, and classified as a by-activity aiming at other objectives (anti-corruption, strengthening civil society and reviving traditional mediation mechanisms). Therefore, not all the projects with a media component are classified as media projects.
   
   
   

   Nevertheless, various generalizations can be made about the wide range of activities in the field. They usually comprise one or more of the following areas:

   • training (for journalists: professional and issue-based, as well as for media managers)
   • media production (news, reports)
   • production of specialized programmes (soaps and series
   • support for individual media
   • support for establishing a conducive legal framework (laws, media regulation)
   • technical assistance for equipment (printing facilities and transmitters)
   • transforming state broadcasters into public service broadcasters
   • promoting coordination and networks among media outlets
   • promoting professional associations
   • security training for journalists
   • legal defence
   • support for audience response systems and media monitoring.

   
   >Areas of attention
   
   As a first step for clarification, this report makes a distinction between different areas of attention; it is useful to distinguish between the coverage of conflicts by the Western media and coverage by the media in the conflict region itself. Regarding the latter, it is beneficial to separate the short- and medium term phase from the long-term phase.
   
   
   

   Chapter 2 will describe the concepts resulting from the difference between Western media and media in conflict regions, chapter 3 will be addressed to the approaches and activities of media in conflict regions according to the different timeframes. This explains partly the difficulties to get detailed information from donors on their “media” projects and its funding, see Chapter 5.