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 | How does Fondation Hirondelle help a population living in a violent conflict area to participate actively in the conflict-solving negotiation process?
This was the theme of a lecture delivered by Jean-Marie Etter, President of Fondation Hirondelle at the seminar on « Public Participation in Establishing Peace » organized by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in Thun, on November the 2nd, 2004.
We thought that it might be interesting for you to read major excerpts of this lecture and to discover, through several concrete examples, the direct involvement of FH radios in such processes.
A “Citizen Media”
Fondation Hirondelle can be defined as a creator of “citizen media” in areas affected by violent conflicts or crises.
The term « citizen media », used in many different contexts, acquires its full meaning in the violent conflict, or crisis, environments where Fondation Hirondelle (FH) operates. In such areas, a considerable part of the population can be considered as passive in the ongoing political and military process.
By passive, I mean that the people have no decision-making capacity and do not intervene directly in current events – whether militarily or in any other way.
As the population is passive, it is impossible de determine whether it is opposed or favorable to the conflict. It is passive, although it is strongly involved, often physically and in any case emotionally.
One of the crucial aspects of such emotional involvement is fear. In recent years, «hate media » have often been evoked.
But in a conflict-ridden society, fear is much more widespread than hatred, and it is therefore socially more significant. One could imagine, on the opposite, media that could be defined as « empathy media ». Hence, to define our role or mission, it would be preferable to oppose « trust-rebuilding media » to « fear media ».
Another aspect of such emotional involvement: the group caught in the conflict has the feeling that its identity and fundamental interests are at stake. Identity criteria have evolved in time. Traditionally, identity was considered in terms of a national, ethnic, religious community, covering a given territory. But other criteria are increasingly used in defining identity, such as: clientelism, race, sex, age, economic and social status.
A radio station or any media seeking to play a social role in favor of peace must take into account this factor in its program schedule. If it reduces its perception of conflicting identities to an ethnical, religious or national factor – it does not only run the risk of being inefficient, but also of making the situation worse.
One of the effects of a violent conflict is precisely that it deletes the individual, blurs the distinction between the individual and the group, merges the individual with his group. Thus the individual is locked up in a stereotype created in the conflict and for the conflict.
For example, if you define a Rwandan citizen as a Tutsi or as a Hutu, if you define a citizen of Northern Ireland as a Catholic or as a Protestant, a Kosovar as an “Albanophone” or as a “Serbophone” – it implies, in violent conflict contexts, that you are defining that person as a potential enemy in a bi-polar couple of adversaries.
A radio station or any media seeking to play a social role in favor of peace must emphasize individuals as such, without concealing their group identity (which would be another way of reducing them) but on the contrary by helping them recover their genuine individual identity.
 photo ICRC
Aggressors and Victims
Of course, the aggressor-victim couple provides a crucial key to understand any conflict.
Because of its dramatic efficiency it has become a model for media reports and comments. In turn, it influences political deciders, and therefore donors, as well as NGOs. It also constitutes a reduction, an oversimplification.
It is usually not experienced by the concerned populations in the same way as by actors who are external to the conflict. In a violent conflict area, all members of your rival group are potential aggressors, and all members of your own group are potential victims.
This perception conditions the very possibility of the conflict. It is difficult to imagine that an entire social group would fight while imagining itself as the aggressor, and its opponent group as the victim.
To take a somewhat simplified example, a majority of Israelis could not support their government’s policy if they perceived themselves as aggressors of Palestinian victims. Conversely, the Palestinians could not support their armed struggle if they perceived themselves as aggressors of Israeli victims. In any conflict situation, a decisive element in a reconciliation process would be to allow each person to perceive himself, at least partly, as belonging to a group committing an aggression or as an aggressor himself, and to perceive the other party as a victim. In this respect, a media, a radio station can play a unique role, particularly through live reports and stories.
Obviously, something essential is being played out in such a radical reversal from victim posturing to sharing responsibility. As long as a population does not control what is happening, it potentially has the status of a victim. Its members are victims, a priori, of aggressions perpetrated by the other group, the enemy. And also, potentially, victims of anyone : victims of those who carry arms or use them, victims of an authoritarian or totalitarian power, victims of the economic situation generated by the war.
But when people have the possibility of becoming socially active, even in a limited way, they can stop perceiving themselves as potential victims. The act of choosing your political representatives following free electoral campaigns and ballots, therefore with access to impartial information, is a way of being socially active, in the sense I wish to convey here. But to be able to say no to power pressures, to be able to defend yourself, or to have someone defend you against aggressions by armed groups, to be able to say no when a clandestine armed group comes to recruit your son, etc. – these are all opportunities to be socially active. And such acts and attitudes often depend on a degree of access to information.
Of course, this is not enough for people to acquire the will to move out of a conflict – but it creates the opportunity to do so. I believe that any media action in conflict areas must respect people’s free will – keeping in mind that it is not because they perceive themselves as potential victims, nor because they perceive themselves as participating in their own social destiny, that people are pacifists.
The function of peace radios is not to preach a pacifist ideology – the impact of which would be negligible. It is, on the contrary, to create the optimal conditions for the peace process: to overcome the non-recognition of “the other”, fear, etc. One must recall that physical security, a non-violent situation and the beginning of a political process, are indispensable prerequisites to the creation or restoration of mutual trust.
People aspire to peace, fundamentally, because they have the feeling that the basic conditions for peace – in particular, economic viability and justice – exist.
The predominant role of minority groups
Such groups -- which during the conflict are carrying out (or have carried out) an extreme, intensive, activity and are managing (or have managed) local affairs – include military personnel, armed groups, politicians or highly politicized groups, and intellectuals. In terms of numbers, they are a minority. They are determined, they have reached points of non-return and often draw considerable advantages (direct, material or moral) from the conflict.
A radio or any media has little direct influence on this type of audience. One important exception: military personnel and armed group members, insofar as they are very often instrumentalized: such is the case, in particular, with child soldiers. They are liable, at a given point in time, to perceive themselves as victims. This is striking when one listens to live accounts by child-soldiers. On the other hand, such actors are extremely dependent on the influence they exert over their group. Thus, they pay great attention to any media that is liable, in any way, to reduce or modify that influence.
Such a group can come to play a prevalent part in the representation of society conveyed by the peace media or by the Fondation Hirondelle radio. Naturally, to establish and maintain its leadership during the conflict, it will tend to monopolize the right to speak – not only to the detriment of leaders of other groups or factions, but also of its own rank-and-file members, whom we define as « passive members » of the group. However, the situation changes when these leaders are challenged to speak within a journalistic framework on the radio. They are questioned, they have to face their own contradictions, to confront their critics and explain their positions; and the other group members are encouraged, with the help of the journalist, to become active, to ask questions to their leaders, to request explanations.
When, moreover, they are given the opportunity to speak up, to tell their story, to offer their point of view or even to interview political leaders, a vertical (ascending and descending) communication flow is initiated. Such de-sacralization of leaders is an important element in the process whereby citizens begin to manage their own affairs.
FH Radios, Peace Symbols
 There are always, in a conflict-ridden society, sites which symbolize the conflict – head offices of State institutions or of political parties, of the Administration, of the Army, etc. But there are few institutions symbolizing the end of the conflict, reconciliation, and peace. In areas where a United Nations mission operates (such as MONUC in Congo), its headquarters and all of its premises do constitute such symbolic locations – and they sometimes pay the price, when people feel that peace is not progressing as it should, and wreck the mission’s buildings. Many international NGOs aspire to be recognized in this symbolic role, but they do not always succeed. An FH radio should be identified by all as an institution symbolizing peace, reconciliation or reconstruction, and operating in the long run. We have evoked several characteristics of populations in violent conflict areas, and several characteristics of a return to peace in the aftermath of a violent conflict. Indeed, we are aware that such processes are slow and vulnerable: a return to peace can sometimes be interrupted by a new outbreak of violence. photo: F. Florin/FH
For Fondation Hirondelle, the populations that I previously considered from the standpoint of conflict solving, will become a target audience.
According to the needs and requests of this audience, we intend to design the best possible programs.
A major objective is to help the population become active again in events and exert a conscious control on its social and political destiny. It is in this sense that we are talking about a citizen radio in a conflict area.
Read also: Citizen Media, Peace Media: Citizien Broadcasts : Citizen Broadcasts
| Tiré à part «Quoi de Neuf» Décembre 2004 |
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