Conflict situations are dynamic, i.e. are changing all the time. Communication by organisations needs to take into account these different phases. The following is taken from Annabel McGoldrick and Jake Lynch.

1. Before Direct Violence There is TENSION and DISAGREEMENT between A and B but no one is killing each other. Option 1 - Do not cover it Problem – the independence movement become frustrated if they feel no-one is listening to them. They may escalate their actions until someone does listen. By waiting for an outbreak of violence before we report, we risk sending the message that to get attention for their grievances people should be violent. Not just to the activists of province A but anyone else who happens to be watching. Option 2 - Talk it up Problem - presenting the conflict between A and B as a bloodbath in the making risks inflaming the fear or mistrust each party has about the other and strengthening their partisan perceptions. Option 3 – Peace Journalism approach a) How seriously do indigenous people and settlers living in province A view the prospect of an outbreak of violence? b) How are they expressing their fears, resentments and grievances? c) Is it making people shun each other, stop trading with each other, discriminate in giving people jobs/contracts etc. (structural violence) or insult and slander each other (cultural violence)? d) Are there individuals working at the grass roots to promote understanding, break down stereotypes and foster a dialogue about ways of living together? e) Could they appear in your coverage as “heroes in the community”?

2. Beginning Of Violence POLARISATION - As tensions rise still further and the conflict develops, goals harden into demands and positions. Violent incidents occur and moderates on all sides become POLARISED. People tend to ask themselves “who will protect me?” and find the only answer is “my own kind”. Option 1 – Use the most extreme statements from both sides to make the most dramaticstory. Problem - risks demonising each side in the eyes of the other and entrenching stereotypes. Option 2 – Compare demands and ask politicians if they see room for compromise. Problem – leaves the two-party, zero-sum structure intact. Parties can change the situation only if prepared to accept less of things they already believe they want. Option 3 – A Peace Journalism approach First, try drawing up a ‘Partisan Perceptions’ table, enabling you to: a. Enquire beyond the parties’ stated POSITIONS and DEMANDS to identify what they really want. Can connect us with people’s experience of the issues in everyday life. Such as: • Why do people province A want to control “their own” resources? • Do they all aspire to become miners or oil workers or do they want the proceeds spent on roads, hospitals, schools etc? • Why do settlers from country B feel so afraid of the indigenous people of province A “imposing” their religion and culture on life in the province? • Maybe most would be happy to do their own thing and to allow for some rights of patrimony to continue to be decided by settler communities for themselves? You could ask! b. Overcome your own BIAS. So you are not just relying on your impressions of the rights and wrongs of the conflict, but going through a systematic process of mapping the conflict. c. Help to DISAGGREGATE the conflict, identifying many parties with many goals, opening up greater potential for creative solutions. From the table, some important ‘facts’ seen as crucial by one side may bear upon the interests and behaviour of other parties. If B believes national and regional security is at risk if A gains independence, then other countries in the region can appear as part of the problem and – perhaps – part of the solution.

3. Parties not communicating Journalists, contacting each side in turn for comments or stories, may be among the only messengers between different groups. A rare occasion when the role of the journalist is analogous to that of a mediator. If you have drawn up a ‘Partisan Perceptions’ table as above, you can then go to A and ‘unpack’ its demands and position, instead asking questions about what it really wants. Then when you go to B you may be able to tell them something they did not already know from their understanding of A’s position. This can add information which helps to change one side’s partisan perceptions of another.

4. What if you can only report on one party? Suppose you are assigned to report on all the statements being made by one party to a conflict, e.g. the Army HQ of country B. Parties to a conflict always justify violence, to themselves and the outside world, in pursuit of a greater good, by means of violent culture. What do you do? Option 1 – Take the justification and the greater good at face value. Questions focusing on the need to step up violence to achieve stated aims, can include suggesting escalations (egging them on). Example: In an interview with a guerrilla commander, a reporter asked: “What will you do if your present tactics do not achieve your aim? Have you considered political assassinations in the capital?” During NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia, in 1999, many reporters would ask: “You’ll never do this with air power alone – when are you going to send in ground troops?” Problem – further entrenches partisan perceptions, provides an incentive to violence with the promise of being reported as right and justified; even suggests new ways of being violent. Option 2 – Greet the party’s justification and aspiration to bring about a greater good with ridicule, scorn and contempt. Example: a UK newspaper headed one critical piece on the same conflict: “NATO - with a moral purpose? Don’t make me laugh!” Problem – makes no contribution to any incentive for change because the party concludes it is not worth trying to provide you with a ‘good news story’. Just swaps round who are the ‘good guys’ and who are the ‘bad guys’. With only two parties on the map the conflict remains in stalemate. Option 3 – the peace journalism approach a) Focus on likely outcomes of violence: • by taking the greater good on its merits and asking whether the existing (violent) policies of country B’s Army represent the best way to achieve it? • Are they storing up trouble for the future, including a likely recurrence of the same problem? b) Is there shame? The Army may be presenting itself as the “goodies,” the other side as the “baddies”. Your approach is not to say “No, you are really the baddies” but to suggest “Come on, you’re supposed to be the goodies, how can you justify (say) shooting civilians?” Remember, if someone is all bad, they can’t be ashamed of themselves. c) Creativity You can introduce new ideas by asking questions which raise them with the party concerned. Examples could begin with “Have you thought of….” or “This reminds me of…” d) Preventative The ‘road to Basra’ question. In 1991, a column of Iraqi tanks, lorries and various other vehicles was attacked by the US air force while retreating from Kuwait City to Basra in southern Iraq. One officer described it as a ‘turkey shoot’ and hundreds were killed. As they were withdrawing in defeat and disarray when attacked it could be described as a massacre. Then in 1999 NATO said it would only stop bombing Yugoslavia when a “verifiable withdrawal” of army units from Kosovo was already underway. The preventative peace journalism question at NATO headquarters was: “At what point in moving along a road does, say, a column of Yugoslav army tanks cease to be a legitimate target for bombing and become the start of a verifiable withdrawal? You’ll have to sort it out because after all, we don’t want another ‘Road to Basra’ do we?” Eventually NATO did stop bombing before the start of the withdrawal, perhaps mindful that ‘turkey shoots’ would be greeted, at least by some journalists, as unacceptable from a party presenting itself as ‘the goodies’.

5. Reporting On Massacres Reports begin filtering through to the press corps at Army HQ of a massacre by separatists from province A in territory so remote it would take at least a day for you to get there. What do you do? Option 1: Splash it as an atrocity, demanding urgent action, likely to change the course of war. Problem: Massacres have a long and nasty history of turning out to be either made up or, if based on the truth, looking very different when the full picture is finally revealed. Without all the details, such an incident can appear the fault of one party, whereas, aspects which later emerge can make them appear as an unintended consequence of conflict. Option 2: Ignore it. Problem: Not practical since other reporters will be filing on it and your editor will want to know why you are not following suit! You risk the party which originated the reports stepping up its efforts to get your attention, perhaps with more extreme or more violent means. Option 3: The peace journalism Approach Report the reports, ensuring that your audience knows as much as you can tell them about: • Who originated the reports, who they told, how and in what circumstances? • Draw attention to any areas of continuing uncertainty. • Is there any police, forensic or other independent investigation underway? • Is there any particular aspect the investigation is looking at? • Was anyone else there at the time besides the people who originated the reports you’ve seen? What do they say about it? If we don’t know, say in your story, “we are still waiting to hear from them.” Examples: 1. IRAQ/KUWAIT In 1991 the US Congress heard from a young Kuwaiti woman who said she’d been working as a nurse in the main hospital in Kuwait City where Iraqi occupying soldiers were switching off incubators, leaving premature babies to die. Then President Bush (the first) referred to this in several speeches urging an attack on Iraq. The ‘nurse’ turned out to be the teenaged daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. She had not been to Kuwait in years. Nurses who were there said after the war that the reports were false. 2. YUGSOLAVIA The Racak ‘massacre’ was a pivotal moment in justifying NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia to world opinion. Several dozen Albanians were found by William Walker, a senior official of the US State Department and chief of the OSCE mission to Kosovo, lying dead by the side of the main street of Racak, a village in the province. Walker was filmed on the street, inspecting the bodies, one morning in January 1999. According to some reports, however, the day before, there was a battle in nearby woods between Serbian armed police and fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army. The evidence, in the form of the bodies, was not secured – journalists, among others, were able to contaminate it before a proper investigation could be carried out. A study by a Finnish forensic team produced highly equivocal results. Were the dead men defenceless civilians – or slain in battle? We still don’t know. 3. SOUTH AFRICA In 1994, a ‘massacre’ took place in Mahehle, KwaZulu/Natal, South Africa, part of ongoing violence between the African National Congress and the rival Inkatha Freedom Party, in the run-up to South Africa’s first democratic election. A group of teenagers camping out in a disused hut on the outskirts of a village were shot dead late one night. It turned out that their campfire had caused some locals to panic, thinking an attack on the village was being planned and alerting vigilantes from the IFP. A police investigation concluded that the guns had been fired from a considerable distance, not something one would expect if the killers knew those inside the hut were unarmed. In this case the information switched the focus away from blame – seeing the violent acts of one party as ‘the problem’ – to the conflict as the problem, leading to errors of judgement with consequences no-one intended, including the killing of children. Finally you could always use your own report to remind readers, listeners or viewers of past ‘massacres’– like the ones discussed here - which turned out to be either contrived or misdescribed on the basis of a genuine misunderstanding.

6. Reporting on Refugees You are sent to a border crossing just inside an independent Republic – C, abutting province A - where several thousand indigenous people have appeared as refugees, they say, from the brutality of country B’s armed forces. Option 1 – A time honoured method. March round the refugee camp calling out “anyone here been raped and speaks English?” Get people to tell you the most heartrending stories and to give the most graphic descriptions of the violence they endured. Problem – People do not leave their homes except for serious reasons. But history tells us that refugees almost invariably give exaggerated accounts of the situation which forced them to flee. By reproducing these accounts you risk spreading alarm among other people in the same territory who may then leave their homes; and providing ‘justification’ for a disproportionate analysis of the urgency of the situation and a violent response against the supposed perpetrators. Option 2 – Play it down. Approach the assignment determined to disbelieve refugee stories unless they can provide forensic proof. Problem – Proof to back up true stories to a standard required in a court of law only ever comes to hand much later. Your editor is unlikely to want to wait that long! Option 3 – the PJpeace journalism approach. a) Seek out indigenous people who can tell you what happened to them - personally. b) Look for interviewees who can say what they saw with their own eyes. c) BEWARE - Reports of things people have only heard about ‘ain’t worth shit’. d) BE CAREFUL not to report as ‘FACT’ estimates, extrapolations and suppositions by aid agencies. e) Ask yourself - who is offering you access to the refugees? f) What is their interest? g) Might an appreciation of their interest by refugees – who may share their interest - be conditioning the stories you are being told? h) BE CAREFUL some people from province A have an interest in talking things up. i) BEWARE NGOs may want money to provide for the refugees and therefore talk up the figures/atrocities. j) Try to suggest some of the factors which may be leading country B to behave badly towards civilians of province A. k) Be frank about ALL wrongdoing and do not seek to excuse it. l) ALWAYS seek the underlying explanation for wrongdoing.12wrongdoing. 41 Example YUGOSLAVIA In 1999, hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians streamed across the borders with Macedonia and Albania. They were portrayed as fleeing persecution by the Yugoslav military, Serbian Police and gangs of paramilitaries – an urgent justification, according to NATO countries, for the Alliance bombing campaign. Correspondents, helped by spokespersons for aid agencies and international organisations, extrapolated their most gruesome stories into confident assertions that tens or even hundreds of thousands of civilians were being massacred. The truth was more complex. Many refugees, both among those appearing on the southern borders and among the comparatively unnoticed exodus to the north, were telling anyone who would listen that they were fleeing the bombing itself or at the instigation of the Kosovo Liberation Army. On closer inspection, some stories of brutality turned out to be hearsay. No human remains were found in or near the furnace of a metal works where the Yugoslavs were reportedly burning the bodies of their victims. A UN team looked into claims that Serbian paramilitaries had set up ‘rape camps’ where large numbers of Albanian women were herded in. Their finding that these reports were false got far less coverage than the original claims. The eventual death toll – from battles as well as massacres of civilians – was under ten thousand.

7. Stalemate The Independence Movement wants the State of country B out of province A. B says it must keep control of A to protect the territory’s citizens who settled there from elsewhere in B, and the interests of B as a whole. Two parties with a single GOAL locked in a grim struggle which each believes will end in total victory for itself. Option 1 – Decide which of these two parties is ‘in the right’ and concentrate ondocumentingon´documenting the wrongdoing of the other side. Seek out politicians from country B who want to see harsher tactics applied and separatists who want paramilitary activities stepped up. Problem –Problem: • Legitimises and incentivises continuing the violence • Further entrenches the stalemate 42• Leaves a bigger burden of trauma to shift when violence does eventually endend. Option 2 – Report the violence, including in your reports appeals for the men of violence to see sense. Problem – Does not illuminate the causes of violence, locates the solution in (by implication, wicked) individuals deciding to behave themselves better. Option 3 – The PJpeace journalism Approachapproach a) Draw up a Partisan Perceptions Table: • ASK how does being run by the state of country B affect the indigenous people of province A in everyday life? • How is this process reproducing violence? • What is country B really afraid of? • Do other parties beyond province A (like separatist movements in other parts of B, other countries in the region, international corporations) have some responsibility for B’s fears? b) Look for where CHANGE is likely to come from: • Who is talking about peace? • Who is acting to bring people together and promote understanding? • These could include community projects, religious groups, fringe politicians etc. These questions may help to identify aspects of the situation which everyone has taken for granted as being FIXED but which, if changed, could serve to break the stalemate and move towards a solution. Remember the rat in the maze. Example BRITAIN/NORTHERN IRELAND Ireland, Northern Irish Republicans and Nationalists all wanted the British State out of Northern Ireland. Britain, Unionists and Loyalists all wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. The Good Friday Agreement provided for the British State to remain in Northern Ireland but in a CHANGED form which addressed many of the grievances of Republicans and Nationalists. It turned a TUG OF WAR between two parties into a CAT’S CRADLE of several parties: • Britain gave Republicans a share in government • Republicans agreed to put weapons ‘beyond use’ in a process jointly overseen by the British and Irish Governments • Britain and Ireland gave each other co-operation across their shared border on security and trade 43• Ireland gave the Unionists an undertaking to remove their territorial claim on Northern Ireland from their country’s Constitution. • The Unionists gave their consent to power-sharing in government, policing and a range of other issuesissues.

8. Peace proposals The leaders of A and B are negotiating. You are still based with the Army of B, who give out details of a peace plan which they say they have tabled in the talks. What do you do? Option 1 – Report this as an important offer, which now leaves only A’s intransigence preventing a peace agreement. Problem – there may be nothing in the text you have been given which you think A should object to but how do you know you have been shown the full text, or the same text as them? Are you part of a media strategy to prepare us to blame A for the imminent breakdown of negotiations? Option 2 – Some tentative signs emerge that A may be ready to sign up to the deal. You report the text you have received as a solution to the conflict. (‘It’s Peace in our Time!’) Problem – leaders may have many reasons for signing an agreement but their respective peoples may find it does not address the real issues affecting them. So in time the violence recurs and the cycle continues. Option 3 – the PJpeace Approachjournalism approach Suggested questions a reporter could ask of any peace plan: 1. What was the method behind the plan? Dialogue with parties and in that case with all the parties? Some trial negotiation? Analogy with other conflicts? Intuition? 2. To what extent is the plan acceptable to all parties? If not, what can be done about it? 3. To what extent is the plan, if realised, self-sustainable? If not, what can be done about it? 4. Is the plan based on autonomous action by the conflict parties, or does it depend on outsiders? 5. To what extent is there a process in the plan, about who shall do what, how, when and where, or is it only outcome? 6. To what extent is the plan based on what only elites can do, what only people can do or on what both can do? 7. Does the plan foresee an ongoing conflict resolution or is the idea a single-shot agreement? 8. Is peace/conflict transformation education for people, for elites or for both, built in to the plan? 9. If there has been violence, to what extent does the plan contain elements of reconciliation? 44 10. If there has been violence, to what extent does the plan contain elements of rehabilitation/reconstruction? 11. If the plan doesn’t work, is the plan reversible? 12. Even if the plan does work for this conflict, does it create new conflicts or problems? Is it a good deal? 13 Example: MIDDLE EAST The Oslo ‘Peace’ Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. Greeted as a peace agreement with too little attention to the problems. It provided for a series of interim steps to be negotiated between an Israeli state and a Palestinian Authority – a lopsided relationship which meant the process was always likely to run into trouble. It was not based on a clear requirement on Israel to withdraw from illegally occupied territory, but, instead, provided for a complex network of settlements to remain, dividing Palestinian territory, institutionalising inequalities on the ground and the presence of Israeli troops. It did not involve all Arab states committing to recognise Israel’s right to exist and to normal relations.

Source (with slight adaptions and reformatting): Annabel McGoldrick and Jake Lynch (2000): Peace Journalism. What is it? How to do it?, http://www.patrir.ro/doc/online%20resources/pj%20new%20manual.pdf, pp. 35-44.