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UN NGLS - Non-Governmental Liaison Service

http://www.un-ngls.org/spip.php?article3120

 

NGLS INTERVIEWS WANDA E. HALL, INTERACTIVE RADIO FOR JUSTICE

 

16 November 2010

 

Interactive Radio For Justice, operational since 2004, is a project designed to encourage dialog between people in regions where the International Criminal Court (ICC) is investigating the most serious crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes) and the national and international authorities responsible for rendering justice to them. NGLS interviews Wanda E. Hall, Director and Founder of IRfJ.

NGLS: What gave you the idea to start the radio?

My goal in developing the Interactive Radio for Justice (IRfJ) project was to create a line of communication, and a mechanism for mutual understanding and respect, between people living in communities which are targeted by International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations, and the justice authorities who are officially responsible, at local, national and international levels, for bringing justice to these communities. The underlying principle of the project is that people need to understand, and feel like constituents, of justice for it to have an impact in establishing rule of law where none exists. Because most of the places where the ICC investigates are in the midst of on-going armed conflict, security issues are an important concern and I needed to find a safe way to build this “conversation” in light of the armed militia, mined roads and general insecurity which dominated Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo (the first place of investigations by the ICC) in 2005. I chose radio as my tool, since the Ituri region had surprisingly already developed a culture of dynamic community radios, thanks to a seed-grant program of UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] a couple of years before, that had distributed transmitters and antennas throughout the district which allowed short, 5-10 kilometer broadcasting capacity to over a dozen community-radios in Ituri.

Interactive Radio for Justice isn’t a radio itself. We introduce a concept on how to forge a conversation on justice and human rights between the listeners and high-level authorities by using the radio. We have broadcast partner-radios, where we have trained staff who we pay as part of the IRfJ project, who produce IRfJ programming which is broadcast via their radio-stations. In this manner, the IRfJ programs are ‘products’ of the partner-radio. In the DRC we currently have partner-radios in Bunia, Ituri, and in North Kivu, in Goma, the capital city of North Kivu and in Kasugho, an isolated village in the mountainous region north of Goma. We also have four partner radios in the Central African Republic (CAR), where ICC investigations began in 2008. In Ituri, in addition to our partner-radio in Bunia, which now thanks to IRfJ’s investment in antennas for this radio has broadcast-capability over the entire district, we distribute CDs of IRfJ programming to seven other radios in the district who broadcast our programs, not for a broadcasting fee (which we don’t pay) but because their listeners are interested in hearing our programs, and their listeners are often heard on our programs since we travel around the district to record citizen questions and concerns in all of these towns/villages.

NGLS: What are the key issues that the IRfJ project addresses?

The IRfJ project addresses the questions on human rights and justice which citizens in our target communities (those identified by the International Criminal Court for investigations) are asking. A key part of our activity is going out into the community and recording questions and concerns from people in these communities – every question asked is addressed on our programs, it’s a promise that we make to each person who records their question with us, and it’s one of the core principles of the project – every concern deserves a response. As one can imagine in a community ravaged by on-going armed conflict, questions are diverse and touch upon some of the most serious human rights abuses. People ask questions about the law and the rights of children, sexual violence, the rights of accused, the rights of prisoners and impunity for those in powerful positions; they ask about the process and decisions made at the ICC; and they also ask questions about land rights, hereditary rights, police and military abuse of civilians. Depending on what the question is, we try to record responses from the most responsible authorities we can; whether that be the Chief Prosecutor, President or Registrar at the ICC, an official from the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), a minister from Kinshasa, or the Judge President of the local military court, or the regional Prosecutor, or the chief of police or local mayor or village Chief.

NGLS: What have been some of the biggest challenges the radio has faced?

This project is a challenge! Security and logistics, communications – everything that we take for granted living in prosperous and peaceful places, simply is non-existent where we are working; electricity is scarce and undependable so we use a generator when we produce and air our programs and have to think in advance how we will charge our phones and laptops; internet access is weak and can disappear for days at a time, so we rely on sending each other sms messages with our cell phones to communicate. Roads are hazardous and sometimes too dangerous to use, so we are constantly evaluating the security situation when we travel. We are addressing human rights and justice issues where people have never seen or experienced human rights or justice being respected; we are talking about the law publicly in places where high officials and people with power consistently break the law with impunity; we are asking authorities who may not have ever considered themselves “public servants” to respond publicly to citizens’ concerns; we are face to face with concerns that are intense – massacres, displacement, rape (the UN documented over 20,000 rapes in the Kivus region of the DRC in 2009 alone), pillaging and destitute poverty are daily topics of discussion in the communities where IRfJ operates.

Two specific challenging situations come to mind. The first person arrested by the ICC is named Thomas Lubanga, and he was the President of an armed group called the UPC (Union des patriotes Congolais). We started our project as I’ve mentioned in Ituri, and our production partner is based in Bunia, the principal city of Ituri. When Lubanga was arrested, the UPC was the dominant political power (and still is today) in Bunia – virtually all elite in local business, at the university and the police, are UPC members. People would say that one couldn’t even run a kiosk on Main Street without being a member of the UPC. Imagine the risk of broadcasting programming which addressed questions on justice and rule of law, including the activities of the ICC, after Thomas Lubanga was arrested by the ICC. Our journalists were threatened several times. One of our journalists was arrested. Security is a question we discuss daily.

The second example is the village of Kasugho, where we work with a local radio-partner. Our field manager travels for a day and half, by helicopter and then 12 hours on a dirt road, each time he visits Kasugho. Once he’s there, the only way he can communicate by cell phone is to climb to the top of a rock which is at the north-end of the village, where it’s usually possible to have enough network coverage to send a text message. Kasugho has been victim to attacks by several militia groups, including the Congolese army, over the last 15 years. The radio we work with in Kasugho was attacked by the FDLR (Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda), a rebel group whose President has been arrested in Germany by the German police and whose First Secretary was arrested in Paris and sent to the ICC in October. Our program is the first and only opportunity for people in Kasugho to ask their questions to national and international authorities, but it’s a logistical and security challenge to be there and months can pass where we can’t go there because the situation is too volatile or the road to Kasugho is simply too washed out by rains to travel.

NGLS: What do you consider some of its biggest successes?

The project has exceeded my expectations on many fronts, and each year we seem to do something that a year before I wouldn’t have dreamed possible. Managing, as a tiny independent project, to process visas for members of our local teams to visit the ICC, in the Netherlands, feels like a miracle each time we do it, and we’ve brought three journalists to The Hague so far – we currently are holding our breath that two of our journalists (one from CAR and one from DRC) will receive visas this month to spend a week in The Hague with me in November during the opening of the trial against former DRC vice-president Jean Pierre Bemba. Managing to transport antennas from Belgium, into eastern DRC when no shipping company would agree to make the delivery (in a conflict-zone), getting those antennas through local red-tape and getting them installed with the support of the local spiritual leader (so that our radio partner in Bunia can broadcast throughout all of Ituri) was definitely a big success! Holding a Music for Justice concert in Bunia this year, where 2,500 people peacefully enjoyed live-music on justice and human rights themes – the first public event of its kind since before the war – was a great success. Bringing the Chief Prosecutor for the ICC and the lead Defense Counsel for Thomas Lubanga together to answer questions before over 500 people from Ituri was my personal favorite success of the project I think – people in this very divided society saw the Prosecutor and the Defense sitting side by side, respecting each-other’s professional roles, making it clear that they were not enemies but rather two professionals fulfilling their duties and obligations under the law. The event showed in a very clear way how rule of law is a different way to solve conflict than revenge and violence.

NGLS: How does the radio engage with the United Nations, particularly the humanitarian agencies?

While we are completely separate from the UN, it’s fair to say that we would not be able to function where we work without the UN also being in these regions. As a human-rights project we qualify to travel with MONUSCO flights in the DRC, which allows us to travel internally with relative security and this has made it possible for us to work in towns like Kasugho, Mahagi and Aru, for example. We rely on the security advice from OCHA [United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] in all the places where we work. I was evacuated from my house, along with other NGO workers in Bunia, during a horrible night when the Congolese military rampaged and pillaged the town – MONUC may have saved my life by taking me to their barracks where MONUC staff had been evacuated to and kept safe. I don’t think I would have even attempted to start this project in 2005 if the UN didn’t have a presence in the DRC.

NGLS: How do you engage with civil society, particularly humanitarian and/or grassroots NGOs?

When we receive questions on human rights at the local level we ask the local human rights groups to respond, and for our concert in Bunia we invited the local human rights groups and the Human Rights division at MONUSCO to come and distribute information to the public about their work. We use NGOs as experts and authority-voices on our programs, but we have no formal collaboration with any particular group. I should point out that civil society NGOs are quite rare in regions of ongoing conflict unfortunately; the international humanitarian NGOs are present and work to their capacity with basic sanitary, housing and medical needs for displaced people and victims of violence, but outside of visits to IDP [internally displaced people] camps to record questions from people living there, our work doesn’t overlap very often.

NGLS: Do you feel that the radio has helped to bring about social change at the community level? If so, how?

This project is designed to encourage a social consciousness on justice, human rights and rule of law which, if it is developed, will take at least a generation to do so I think. It’s encouraging that our listening groups show an evolving understanding and appreciation of the law; we are inspired that questions from listeners of our programs become more sophisticated and nuanced over the years; our impact analysis shows that knowledge level is up and participation from authorities at local, national and international levels is strong. Will our little project bring significant social change in communities which are gutted and ravaged by war, violence against civilians, destitute poverty and virtual impunity for not only corruption but also crimes against humanity? Definitely not on its own. What we hope is that hearing their voices on the radio, hearing high-level authorities acknowledge and respond to their concerns on the radio, will give these target communities the information, the confidence and the encouragement that they need to continue try to build the kind of society that they would like to live in. But at our best we offer a tear-drop of hope and inspiration in a very large, very dry bucket. What keeps us working and growing is that the local partners we work with believe that this project will make a difference in their communities and the listeners in these communities keep asking questions!