Violence against children

It’s not just the old guys with the young underage girls, which is disgusting (no doubt they excuse it by saying that it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement), but it’s also the absolutely tiny, filthy, tired and hungry little kids in the streets… I know, I know this is big cities everywhere, and there are contrasts everywhere too; the brand new Hummers (you wonder how the owners excuse that to themselves – probably they don’t even think about it)

Radio Journalists can help resolve conflicts…

Participants workshop Biratnagar 2008

I received this email recently from Serena Rix-Tripathee, Search for Common Ground’s country director in Nepal:

Dear Francis, Yesterday I spent the day with the 2009 -2010 alumni of Search for Common Ground’s radio for peacebuilding project here in Nepal, and I just wanted to tell you that IT IS WORKING!!! You would have loved to be there I know.  So many of them started their own talkshows after your trainings, and they talked alot about Knowledge-Attitude-Behaviour, target audience, clear intention,  telling both sides of the story, solution-oriented questioning etc. I was clear by the end of the day that the majority of them really did ‘get’ the peacebuilding concept and are doing it justice.  Alot of them get calls from people having conflicts – even from police who can’t solve things, asking them to solve the conflicts for them. It was a very happy-making day, I missed you all day and wished you were there.

Meanwhile I noticed recently that even the IFJ, with whose Director Aiden White I had a long and slightly acrimonious argument about media and peacebuilding a couple of years ago, seems to have finally come round to the view that maybe the two things aren’t diametrically opposed; see http://www.ifj.org/en/pages/ifj-global-ethical-journalism-initiative-eji

The IFJ just doesn’t like linking journalism and the words peace building, or conflict resolution, but it is what they’re saying.

Destruction of Radio Madagascar

Destroyed a few months after it had been totally revamped by the German govt at vast expense

Running around from one radio station to another working with a number of producers/journalists on programmes promoting knowledge of child rights and issues around violence against children. Particularly struck by RNM, which was destroyed by supporters of the current President on 26 January 2009; throwing brand new equipment out of the windows and eventually setting fire to the whole building. Now RNM is based on the top two floors of a small building at the back of this – you walk up through fire blackened stairs and rooms and find at the top a few poorly equipped studios and some philosophical journalists and technicians. What the current President thinks about the fact that the actions of his supporters then means that RNM can hardly get the voice of the government out at all now is unknown…

The floor below where RNM is now working, in a few hastily repaired rooms

Tana

Antananarivo is pretty and crowded and busy and colourful and full of life, which is always fun. There’s a girl in the workshop who under any other circumstances or in any other place I would swear blind, and bet money on it, was a Sherpali… but of course she isn’t.

I love the 2CV and Renault 4 (remember them?) taxis all painted cream (a bit battered of course), which charge more for going uphill than going down (because they switch off the engine and coast). And all the steps leading up and down, and around the town… and the markets which sell everything from dried tamarind to batteries and sausages to clothes and … oh, you name it! And the people all seem pretty laid back and friendly also – and I don’t just mean friendly to me, a rich foreigner, but also to each other – perhaps that’s what I like – they seem to have a certain amount of respect for each other.