The Drum Beat 255 - Addressing Conflict

***

Addressing conflict situations presents particular communication challenges. This issue of The Drum Beat highlights just a few of the many resources on the Communication Initiative website exploring initiatives, resources, and strategies focused on the use of communication to address conflict.

***

WAR, TERRORISM, AND GENOCIDE

1.Universal Soldier - Global

Why do people fight? What is it like to be suffused with adrenaline? What happens if a gun is too heavy to run with? What is it like to kill another person? How does fighting impact religious or spiritual beliefs? In May 2003, the BBC World Service Trust explored personal moments of fighting and war through a radio series. Soldiers from Russia and across Africa shared their experiences; some broadcasts offered testimonies from families, friends, and communities.

Contact Karen Merkel karen.merkel@bbc.co.uk

2.Terrorists, Radio Waves & Africa's War Against 'Biased Reports'

by Charles Wachira

Some analysts claim that the Western media, which has beamed British news to Kenya since the 1950s, is "biased". "Kenya's tourist industry...has lost $125 million since the US embassy in Nairobi was bombed in 1998, because of a Western perception that it was an unsafe destination. Immediately after the attack, European and US authorities advised their citizens not to travel to Kenya...Western governments reacted very differently to Spain's terrorist attacks in March 2004, which killed 200 people and injured another 1,400."

3.Addressing the Needs of Women Affected by Armed Conflict: An ICRC Guidance Document

To mark International Women's Day in March 2004, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched a practical guide for humanitarian agencies. ICRC says that women's experience of armed conflict is multi-faceted, and includes isolation, increased responsibility for dependants, physical and economic insecurity, detention, and a higher risk of sexual violence, injury, and death.

4.Child Soldiers Documentary - Global

Through a series of intimate encounters with children who have experienced or are participating in soldiering in Uganda, Sudan, Burma, Colombia, and Sierra Leone, this documentary explores recruitment, the hazardous and often brutal life of child soldiers, and post-conflict challenges. Interviews are conducted with escapees from rebel groups as well as representatives of UN agencies and governments worldwide. Many of these conversations focus on the role international bodies can and do play in ameliorating or perpetuating the use of children as soldiers.

Contact enquiries@electricpictures.com.au

5. September 11th: Southern Perspectives

by Olfa Lamloum

In an effort to show how media in southern countries saw and analysed the terrorist attack on the USA that took place on Sep. 11 2001, Panos published a study focusing on how media in central Africa and the Arab world described the events of that day, the beginning of the attacks on Afghanistan, and the transfer of Taliban prisoners to Guantanamo.

6.Control Arms Campaign - Global

In Oct. 2003, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the International Network Against Small Arms launched a campaign in 70 countries to demand regulation of the global arms trade. Goals include reducing arms proliferation and misuse and convincing governments to introduce a legally binding arms trade treaty within a 3-year period. Strategies include a launch report, several missions and actions, and online public awareness activities including a global photo-petition.

Contact Bonnie Abaunza aiusala@aiusa.org OR Sally Joss coordinator@iansa.org OR Teresa Richardson trichard@amnesty.org

COMMUNITY AND DOMESTIC CONFLICT

7.Freedom From Fear - Australia

In 1998, the Western Australian Government embarked on a community education campaign as part of a 10-year effort to protect victims of domestic violence. Television, radio, press, and outdoor advertising reached out to perpetrators and men at risk. Messages urged accepting responsibility for bad behaviour and taking action to end the abuse, in part by seeking help through a toll-free hotline. The first phase focused on physical violence; later stages addressed sexual and emotional abuse.

Contact Leonie Gibbons Tel.: +08 9264 6147

8.Fair Play?: Violence, Gender & Race in Video Games

Published by Children Now, this report examines top-selling video games, identifying the unhealthy social messages these games may send to young players about violence, gender, and race. Strategies for revamping games are offered.

9.Not in Our Town - United States

A media-based community conflict resolution initiative drawing on national networking, television, grassroots events, educational outreach, an action tool kit and curriculum guide, and online activities to help communities experiencing hate crime activity talk to and learn from each other. The half-hour show on which this movement has been built sought to chronicle positive community organising stories and provide practical tools to stimulate dialogue.

Contact Patrice O'Neill poneill@theworkinggroup.org OR niot@theworkinggroup.org

***

PULSE POLL

Popular music is helping to stigmatise people living with HIV and AIDS.

[For context, please click here]

Do you agree or disagree?

***

SOME ISSUES RAISED BY CONFLICT

10.Food Economy in Situations of Chronic Political Instability

by Tanya Boudreau & Philippa Coutts

"In unstable political situations, aid agencies typically need to take decisions quickly - either due to the extreme and changeable nature of events that tends to arise under these circumstances, or because of the limitations placed by a funding agency. At the same time, decisions on the allocation of resources are greatly facilitated by quantified information. Yet the best kind of information does more than cater to decision-makers; it marries their needs with the words, views and realities of poor rural and urban households.."

11.Bombs and Bandwidth: The Emerging Relationship Between IT & Security

by Robert Latham

How and why has information technology (IT) become central to the way governments, businesses, social movements, and even terrorist and criminal organisations pursue their increasingly globalised objectives? "With the emergence of the Internet and new digital technologies, traditional boundaries are increasingly irrelevant, and traditional concepts - from privacy to surveillance, vulnerability, and above all, security - need to be reconsidered."

12.Knowledge, Attitudes and Sexual Behaviour Among the Nigerian Military Concerning HIV/AIDS & STDs

by Sylvia B. Adebajo, Jerome Mafeni, Scott Moreland & Nancy Murray

Conducted among 1,600 Nigerian Armed Forces personnel, this nationally representative survey found that risky sexual behaviours included "multiple partnering, with 15.3 percent of the respondents reporting having had at least two sexual partners over the last 12 months....Although less than 5 percent of the study population admitted having paid for sex, only slightly more than half used a condom on that occasion. A large proportion of respondents were aware that condoms could be used as protection against HIV/AIDS and other STDs, and most of the respondents (98%) knew where to acquire one. However, only half of the respondents claimed to use a condom regularly with their non-regular partners."

13.The Role of Education in Protecting Children in Conflict

by Susan Nicolai & Carl Triplehorn

"This paper argues for a reappraisal of the position of education in emergency programming....How does conflict affect a child's education, and what impact does this have on an affected individual's social or cognitive development? In what ways can education enhance the physical and psychosocial protection of children in war-affected or displaced communities? What risks does education programming in these contested environments present, for children and for agencies themselves?"

14.Cultivating Peace - Conflict & Collaboration in Natural Resource Management

by Daniel Buckles

Case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America that demonstrate conflicts and disputes over natural resources - from verbal disputes to armed conflict and loss of life. These studies - and accompanying essays - offer developing-world experience on ways to work collaboratively and avoid conflict.

***

Soul Beat Africa: Communication for Change

Click here!

***

THE AFTERMATH: PEACE, HEALING, AND RECONCILIATION

15.The Iraqi media three months after the war: A new but fragile freedom

In a 3-month period following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, 85 newspapers and magasines were launched, 20 once-banned Internet cafés provided unrestricted access to the Internet in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan), and stores sold satellite TV dishes again. However, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), these gains in freedom are threatened by restrictions imposed by US/British coalition forces occupying Iraq. Working conditions remain perilous; attacks on the media continue. RSF says work should begin to draft "liberal and democratic" media regulations and laws.

16. Youth Transforming Conflict

Offered from July 5-30 2004 by the Network University Summer School on Conflict Transformation, this online course will aim to strengthen the local capacities of youth leaders in advocacy, empowerment, and collective action for peacebuilding and conflict transformation, and to provide skills and abilities to develop new partnerships and projects. It is part of a learning series that also includes "Transforming Civil Conflicts" (Aug 9 - Sep 3) and "Gender & Conflict Transformation" (Sep 20 - Oct 15).

17.Art and Upheaval - Global

The Center for the Study of Art & Community has launched a field research project to document the efforts of artists working to resolve conflict, promote peace, rebuild civil society, heal physical and psychic trauma, and give new voice to the forgotten and disappeared in communities in upheaval around the world. 20 to 25 stories will highlight the history and practices of artists working in areas such as Northern Ireland and Cuba.

Contact William Cleveland bill@artandcommunity.com

18.Radios for the Consolidation of Peace [RCP] - Niger

Freeplay Foundation is encouraging the people of Niger to exchange their small arms for wind-up radios; so far, hundreds of guns have been exchanged for Freeplay radios.

Contact Lisa Burger lburger@freeplayfoundation.org OR Lisa@freeplayfoundation.org

19.Compassionate Listening: An Exploratory Sourcebook About Conflict Transformation

by Gene Knudsen Hoffman, Leah Green & Cynthia Monroe

"Compassionate Listening is not about resolving conflicts directly. It is about helping conflict participants see one another as human, which creates a new mental and emotional space out of which resolutions can emerge. In this respect, Compassionate Listening represents the next step beyond the 'interest-based bargaining'..."

***

This issue was written by Kier Olsen DeVries.

***