Susan Manuel, United Nations Department of Public Information; UN Media and Post Conflict Peace-keeping

UN Media and Post Conflict Peace-Keeping

Article Prepared for UNESCO Seminar ‘Support to Media in Violent Conflict and in Countries in Transition’, May 3 2004

UN Media and Post Conflict Peace-Keeping

There is an old saying that truth is one of the first victims of war: it has been the experience of UN peacekeepers in post conflict situations that reviving the victim called truth is one of the most crucial tasks for establishing sustainable peace.

When UN peacekeepers deploy to a post-conflict situation, the local media is often in chaos. Infrastructure may be destroyed; more importantly perhaps, the rule of law has been weakened, and those media operations that survive have generally been under the pay or sway of the various parties to the conflict. Or they’ve become actors themselves. The need for a neutral environment in which media can rebuild into independent, objective and far-reaching sources of information is fundamental, but it is not created overnight.

In addition, few people in typical post-conflict situations may understand the often complex or vague UN Security Council mandate which has sent Blue Helmets into their midst. One of the first tasks of the UN mission is to ensure that its presence and mandate are understood, as well as to engage the local population in the peace process. From assessment missions before the peacekeeping operation is actually deployed, the UN must identify the most effective means of communication to suit local circumstances and to reach a variety of audiences—from far-flung rural populations, to refugees and displaced persons, to civil society, ex-combatants, media and leaders. This is not to mention the external audiences including donor states, neighbors and other interested capitals.

The approach by the UN to disseminating accurate information quickly to those who were affected directly by the conflict and must implement the peace has evolved considerably over UN peacekeeping’s 56-year history. Currently there is a surge of demands for UN peacekeeping missions, with 15 ongoing and several new operations about to start in Haiti, Sudan, Burundi and possibly Iraq.

All have vastly different needs in terms of information and communication.

Since its late 1980s mission in Namibia, UN peacekeeping has used civic education and its own forms of media to promote awareness among the general public of its mandate and the peace process.

UN missions try to get the word out by submitting programming to TV and radio stations, deploying theatre troups; printing billboards, posters, comic books, leaflets; running PSAs, websites and town hall meetings. But on several occasions, the UN has actually created its own radio stations.

Radio has been the most prevalent, effective and affordable means of communication in peacekeeping. Currently UN peacekeeping operations are running radio stations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Stations are also planned for Cǒte d’Ivoire and Sudan.

However, the decision on whether to establish a UN broadcast station can sometimes be controversial. (Some criteria are discussed at the end of this paper). Should the UN, sometimes resembling or functioning as a government, run its own media? UN peacekeeping initiatives are always made with a strong claim to transparency and fairness, with messages based upon UN values and the mandate of the mission. But outsiders, competitors and some governments may not always see things that way. The peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia/Eritrea, for example, has found it almost impossible to get government approval for any UN radio programming in Ethiopia, and a limited (one hour a month) programme on Eritrean radio.

Cambodia

Cambodia’s Radio UNTAC (1992-3)is still considered one of the major successes of such operations. It was extremely popular, in part due to its collection of Cambodian music, and it was the only source of balanced news in Cambodia on the political developments leading up to the elections of May 1993. It also exposed human rights abuses, particularly against the Vietnamese minority, which no other Cambodian media would dare touch.

In 1992-93, the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Cambodia, known as UNTAC, was to monitor the administration of the country whose leadership was contested by four major factions, including the Government of Cambodia, until UN-administered elections. The UN was given direct control over four administrative areas including information. For the most part, the ‘control’ was light: UN staff maintained regular contact with media, government and political parties on creating a neutral political atmosphere and encouraging freedom of the press. A flourishing and free-wheeling press emerged, along with some reduction of hate language. However, state and political party media continued biased reportage, ignoring voices of opposition as well as coverage of political or ethnic violence.

In Oct. 1992, UNTAC set up its own radio station, authorized by a Security Council resolution and the Government of Cambodia, and using initially a rehabilitated government transmitter. Although installation and technical problems delayed complete, nation-wide coverage until just days before the election, UNTAC radio had a profound impression on the political mood of the country and is credited with helping the high voter turn out (over 90 percent) with its constant refrain of the mission’s mantra “your vote is secret.” UNTAC radio offered free, equal access and equal time to all 20 political parties.

The election results indicated the rule of PM Hun Sen was over, and Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s son Ranarridh had won. Hun Sen then waged a vicious campaign against UNTAC Radio, alleging that its programming threatened Cambodian family values by allowing lovers to dedicate songs to one another. (UNTAC Radio received up to 1,300 letters a day from listeners.) Hun Sen threatened that the radio would “melt.” (A few days later, lightning struck the telephone facility where the station took song requests.) Ghanaian troops were deployed to defend the station, with machine guns, walls of sandbags and trucks drawing anti-tank weapons blocking the streets. The station survived, but when the mission closed down later that year, the studio was disassembled and shipped out in boxes. The UN decided that it needed the multi-million dollar equipment for other missions, particularly in the former Yugoslavia; the Cambodians were not sufficiently skilled to continue running it; and there were no handover plans.

So-called asset stripping when missions pull out has been criticized regarding other peacekeeping operations deployed to technically challenged countries. However, UN radio stations are transitory by definition: peacekeeping should give local media time and space to recover. At any rate, to soften the transition, after independence was declared in East Timor, in 2003, the UN turned over its popular Radio UNTAET (which had broadcast in four languages since 2000) to the new government, and it became the national radio of Timor-Leste. Likewise, when the UN peacekeeping mission leaves Sierra Leone later this year, it plans to turn over the popular Radio UNAMSIL to Sierra Leoneans.

The Balkans

After Cambodia, the successful strategies, along with some of the fancy equipment of UNTAC Radio were reassembled in Zagreb, Croatia, in early 1994, where they produced dozens of radio programmes that few listeners ever heard. Unlike in Cambodia where the UN had a mandate to control information (and where the State granted permission for a UN station), Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were fully sovereign countries with scant interest in authorizing frequencies for a UN radio station. Cassette tapes of UN radio programmes were dutifully bused and trucked to a multitude of stations around the former Yugoslavia, which were under no compunction to use them. However, in Sarajevo UN staff did convince several stations to carry UN broadcasts, risking sniper fire as they hand-delivered the daily cassettes, and UNPROFOR supported a Bosnian student radio. Only when the UN had administrative authority over Eastern Slavonia, Croatia, in 1997 did it manage to fully broadcast its own programming over a local station.

Kosovo

UNMIK arrived in Kosovo in June 1999 armed with plans for its own radio station.

UN radio producers immediately began programming on Radio Pristina (Albanian) and Radio Korona (Serb), appealing for tolerance, restraint and cooperation with the UN mission. UNMIK took control of a small TV station being run in June-July 1999 by one lonely Serb at the top of the 17-floor Panorama building, which had no functioning elevators. (The station shut down during the summer). The media scene was totally disrupted, and a scramble ensued as to who would inherit the Serbian state assets. The Kosovo Liberation Army briefly seized Radio/TV Pristina (RTP) only to be evicted by NATO-led KFOR troops. UNMIK, KFOR and OSCE then oversaw a more orderly resurrection of Radio-TV Kosovo (RTK) with the objective of “independent public service broadcasting,” initially under the direction of the European Broadcasting Union with funding from several European donors. With the TV transmission towers in Kosovo destroyed by NATO bombing, the EBU broadcast by satellite, while UNMIK TV contributed weekly programming.

The new peacekeeping mission faced the dual challenge of how to communicate directly with the population on the authority of its transitional administration while at the same time fostering the development of independent and responsible media. UNMIK’s plans for its own radio station were opposed by the OSCE and US AID, among others. A UN radio, they argued, would run counter to the goals of developing a local media in a commercial marketplace, as well as to OSCE’s plans for a public service broadcaster. A UN radio would seduce journalists to its staff with UN salaries (gauged to local standards but usually far higher than the pay of local journalists) and it would disseminate propaganda, ran the arguments. The US was also supporting several private media in Kosovo. (The American vs. European debate over public vs. private media continued for several years over whether RTK, as a “public broadcaster,” should support itself with commercial advertising or a tax on viewers.)
The compromise was Blue Sky Radio, set up in July 1999 by Fondation Hirondelle and UNMIK as an emergency measure, broadcasting news and other programming Albanian, Serbo-Croat and Turkish languages. Hirondelle hired and trained a team of young journalists who broke ground in terms of objective reporting in a post-conflict environment that remained ethnically divided, especially among local and regional media. Blue Sky Radio was integrated into RTK three months later. “UN Radio” had its own service which ran on Blue Sky as a programme identified as “UN,” as Hirondelle insisted on an “independent” editorial policy. Hirondelle is also the UN’s partner with Radio Okapi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although the contract between Hirondelle and the UN gives editorial control to MONUC (the UN mission), MONUC director of information Patricia Tome scoffs at concerns over editorial policy: “The word ‘independence’ is irrelevant and inappropriate. The key words are ‘professional’ and ‘credible,’” she says of Radio Okapi.
Radio Okapi—the Democratic Republic of the Congo

United Nations peacekeepers arrived in the DRC in 1999 to monitor a shaky ceasefire that had ended 10 years of war and was to precede unification of a vast and fragmented territory the size of Western Europe (2.4 million square miles: 45 million inhabitants), but with none of its infrastructure. The mission faced the daunting challenge of assisting the consolidation of the new nation that had been chewed up by seven neighboring countries. The conflict had left millions dead and displaced, without national roads, mail or phone services. The media had been used to divide and inflame instead of unite and inform.

The UN’s most ambitious broadcast project, Radio Okapi (named after a Congolese mammal) began broadcasting in February 2002 and in ways both symbolic and real, it has re-unified the country via the air waves.

Again, having good music was a key to drawing Okapi’s audiences, who now number some 20 million Congolese. But, in partnership with the Fondation Hirondelle (and supported by USAID, DFID and Swiss funding) the station increased the availability of and access to balanced information across a huge territory that in any other sense of the word was not united. Fondation Hirondelle and MONUC hired more than 100 Congolese journalists, helped them assemble music, introduced new technology and defined editorial policy. (The UN Organization mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—MONUC-- has the ultimate editorial control.)
Broadcasting in five languages over 14 FM frequencies, Radio Okapi disseminates information about humanitarian assistance, the peace process, DDRRR and other issues, and it engages Congolese in daily dialogues over the air. Okapi’s national programme is based on news gathered from around the country and produced in Kinsasha, then broadcast by satellite to local stations and its regional studios (soon to number 13) which also produce their own programming.

Throughout the late 1990s the UN ran several other radio stations—one in the Central African Republic run with Danida support; another in Rwanda (after the massacres). Radio UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone, has been particularly long-lived and popular.

Sierra Leone

UN peacekeepers (UNAMSIL) arriving in Sierra Leone 1999 had to determine how to communicate with a population of whom 70-80 percent were illiterate and easily susceptible to misinformation, where the local media was weak, polarized, and almost entirely capital-city based, and where conventional means of communication were nearly non-existent in most of the country.

UNAMSIL’s leadership realized that a nation-wide radio, used effectively, would be critically important as a constant, impartial source of news and a sensitization tool--on developments in the peace process; on disarmament; demobilization and reintegration; on matters of reconciliation and justice; and on elections. In the course of two years, the UN transformed Radio UNAMSIL from a station with limited reach and a balance of air time devoted to music and entertainment to the most popular 24-hour radio FM and short-wave radio station in the country, with the most listened to morning news and all-night programme, broadcasting in five languages, and reaching about 90 percent of the country. Radio UNAMSIL was the only station to provide real-time reporting on the elections from reporters pre-positioned all over the country, despite severe logistical problems. The UN learned that investments in equipment and pre-positioning of transmitters must be done as early and as quickly as possible. UNAMSIL was also the first peacekeeping mission to launch a radio programme designed, produced and broadcast by children of 5 to 18 years old to assist their post-war rehabilitation and provide education and entertainment. The UN radio trained dozens of children as producers and reporters.

On rare occasions, disturbing incidents have also revealed the reach and influence of a UN radio: in August 1993, a soft-voiced Cambodian radio reporter quietly read out a list of organizations and politicians whom a letter writer had accused of various vile deeds—nearly destroying over five minutes the station’s reputation of fairness and high standards. (The station quickly retracted) Once over Radio UNAMSIL, a UN spokesman mistakenly stated that rebels were marching on Freetown, causing nation-wide panic.

Liberia

By the time that UN peacekeepers took over in a chaotic Liberia in October 2003, the importance of immediate communication with the population via radio to explain the arrival of a peacekeeping operation had reached its apex in the thinking of UN public information planners. An emergency studio-in-a-box was shipped in from the UN's logistics base in Brindisi, Italy, and UN personnel on the ground undertook an intensive few days of testing equipment and scouting sites for optimal signal relay. On day one of the mandate, UN radio provided a live signal for rebroadcast by all Monrovia radio stations, with the result that the population in the greater Monrovia area--comprising about one third of Liberia's total population--had access to live coverage of the arrival of the Special Representative, his address to the people of Liberia and the ceremonies re-hatting ECOWAS troops as UN peacekeepers. Other similar arrangements were put into place to provide live coverage of the installation of the transitional government and other key events. By the end of the month and with the arrival of more equipment, Radio UNMIL began its own regular broadcasts and moved quickly from two hours daily to 24 hours a day 7 days per week, while steadily expanding its area of coverage.

When a UN radio is called for

Making the decision as to whether to establish a UN broadcasting capacity, or simply produce programming and/or materials that add to the local media mix, is now done after considering the following criteria:

1. What is the mandate and scope of the peacekeeping operation?
2. What is the national media environment? Is there already a free, independent and non partisan media. What would the impact be upon local media were the UN to establish its own media?
3. What is the condition of local media infrastructure after the conflict?
4. What is the national authority? Would it agree to a UN frequency? Or does the UN have authority in the domain of information?.
5. What is the literacy rate in the host country? What would be the effectiveness of using radio? Do people have radios?**
6. In addition to directly supporting the UN mandate, how else would a UN radio contribute to assisting the peace process and serving the community?
7. Is there a non-UN partner and/or donor interested in collaborating on a UN broadcast capacity and who could provide technical and staff support?


* Fondation Hirondelle is an organization of journalists which sets up and operates media services in crises areas.

**The history of donating radios to populations without information on peacekeeping missions has been mixed: riots broke out outside rural Cambodian warehouses holding used radios from Japan before they could be distributed. And in the DRC, UN staff going into the countryside to give away radios were attacked, and the efforts had to be abandoned. Other reports indicate that wind-up radios tend to be easily broken or cannibalized for parts.


25 April 2004
Susan Manuel, United Nations Department of Public Information