Communist guerrillas in the Philippines have said they are willing to resume peace talks with the government after President Rodrigo Duterte revived the offer but they have reject any preconditions. In 2016 Duterte campaigned on a promise to end the nearly 50-year Maoist rebellion, which has been the cause of over 40,000 deaths, but he abandoned peace talks in November, blaming repeated rebel attacks.
Now, Duterte has invited Jose Maria Sison, a self-exiled Communist rebel leader, back to the country for “make or break” peace talks. Reuters reports here.
Following the surprise win by controversial Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Sairoon coalition in Iraq’s May 12 parliamentary elections, a new coalition government has yet to form. USIP’s Sarhang Hamasaeed analyzes what led to al-Sadr’s victory, low voter turnout at the polls, the state of the political process in Iraq, and Iraqis’ expectations for meaningful reform from the next government.
Colombia’s presidential election race is the most divisive in decades, with the future of the peace deal signed by the government and FARC rebels in 2016 at stake. Rightwinger Ivan Duque, who believes the deal is too lenient on FARC, leads after the first round, ahead of leftist Gustavo Petro.
International news often focuses on violence but rarely on peacebuilding news. To figure out why, War Stories Peace Stories held an event in New York in April, bringing together leaders in media and peacebuilding fields.
Conference organizer Jamil Simon, from Spectrum Media, said addressing the gap in mainstream media is essential. “Peacebuilding is invisible to the public, and that’s a real problem,” he said, “because how can we ask the public to advocate for peace if they never see it in the news.”
“[With] peace activities the only thing you ever see are two people signing a treaty. There’s very little story showing how they got there, or what happens afterwards.”
One of the problems is resources, explained journalist Mariana Palau. “A lot of editors worldwide, they might be interested in the stories but they don’t have the money to send us where we need to go to report on these very meaningful stories.”
Jon Sawyer, from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, agreed. “It’s a matter of getting funding to go into the regions, to tell stories that have value – more than just the body count, the death count, in a day in a war situation, but underlying causes of conflict and possible solutions of conflict.”
Another challenge is finding an interesting angle.
“Peacebuilding has liabilities when it comes to telling stories because it’s nuanced, it’s quiet,” Mr Simon said. “To conventional news media, there’s no story if there’s no violence.”
Experts recommend humanizing conflicts and talking to peacebuilders on the ground.
“From the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar to Gaza to across the Middle East to Congo to South Sudan, I think that the common theme for the stories that are successful is capturing a human voice in those conflicts,” Mr Sawyer said. “What the impact is on people living in those regions – not the policy makers – but the people, the families, the mothers, the fathers, the children, the grandparents, what the effect is on them.”
“One thing I would encourage journalists to do is to try to reach out to organizations that are trying to reduce the violence, that are trying to prevent it in one way or another,” Mr Simon said, “because there are unarmed heroes all over the world, working to prevent violence.”
Opinion: Steven Youngblood is the founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University in Parkville, Missouri USA, where he is a communications professor. He has organized and taught peace journalism seminars and workshops around the world.
Sometimes, peace and peacebuilding comes in the most unexpected places.
After months of meticulous planning, I had a pretty good idea that our peace journalism project might make an impact on professional journalists and on my students at the University of Gondar UoG, Ethiopia, where I was based. At minimum, I knew I’d have their attention, since civic unrest, including a state of emergency and protesters shot dead by police, has roiled Ethiopia for several years.
But I hadn’t expected the most significant impact of the project would be on ten 7th graders attending the Gondar Community School.
Why was I in Ethiopia? In the fall of 2017, I was named a U.S. Senior Subject Specialist for Peace Journalism in Ethiopia. This project was launched by the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University, the U.S. Embassy-Addis Ababa, and UoG.
I came to the capital Addis Ababa in mid-January, and taught several workshops there before moving on to Gondar. At UoG, I taught two courses, and also presented a peace journalism seminar in April. I also traveled to Bahir Dar (February), Hawassa (March), and Mekelle (April) to deliver peace journalism workshops for university students, professors, and professional media staff. In total, my peace journalism seminars reached about 310 students, academics, and journalists.
These meetings and workshops were successful in planting the seeds of responsible peace journalism, which by definition is when reporters and editors make choices that can create an atmosphere conducive to peace. These choices include avoiding inflammatory language as well as rejecting story frames that exacerbate already tense or violent situations. Peace journalists pledge to give a voice to the voiceless and to peacemakers, and to provide a platform for society to evaluate solutions and to consider non-violent responses to conflict. (For much more, see: http://www.park.edu/peacecenter ).
When I wasn’t working with professional journalists or my students at UoG, I was engaged with a group of seventh graders at the University of Gondar Community School. For about two months, my co-advisors Peggy Landers, Habtie Marew, and I met with the kids once a week to present the basics of journalism and peace journalism and of producing a newspaper. Then, the students organized themselves into a newspaper staff, and went out to report, shoot pictures, etc. Using these materials, they produced their school’s first student newspaper, in English. I was thrilled by the paper produced by the students, and by their enthusiasm. I was even more thrilled when, during our last meeting, the newspaper staff began planning for the second issue of their newspaper.
I strongly believe that the best peacebuilding initiatives breach boundaries (national, racial, religious, etc.) and create new connections among people. That’s exactly what happened with our seventh graders, who not only absorbed peace journalism’s lessons, but came away with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the world around them, including, I hope, America and Americans. I know the reverse was true; that the students helped me bridge the Ethiopian and American cultures, and to deeply appreciate and respect them as journalists and young people.
Our seventh graders reminded me that sometimes peacebuilding happens in ways you least expect it, and that these serendipitous outcomes are often the most satisfying.
