IWPR Project Review - July/August 2009

Exposing Fraud in Afghan Election

The Afghan election was one of the biggest stories on the international stage this year, with IWPR created arguably the most complete record of the campaign and polls by any media outlet working in Afghanistan. Throughout July, IWPR election-related workshops were held for trainee journalists in ten locations across the country.

These reporters had been studying with IWPR for the past year, and their hard work resulted in high quality coverage. More than 30 election-related stories were published during July and August. IWPR journalists gained access to places where the international media could not reach and led the way in reporting the widespread election fraud.

Election day in the Balkh province. © IWPR

While the international community initially hailed the election as a success, right from the start IWPR clearly presented a full picture of the violence and fraud which marred the process.

The story Taleban Tactics Take Their Toll followed the vote from Wardak to Ghazni to Mazar-e-Sharif to Helmand, interviewing voters and officials as they struggled to get through a day that challenged every Afghan, whether an ordinary resident, an election worker or a security officer. Our report Helmand Vote Marred by Rockets and Fraud zeroed in on one province, exploring more deeply the issues that would dominate the post-election debate.

The story Afghans Speak of Electoral Fraud and Fear which was prominently featured on Afghanistan’s foremost listserv, Moby Capital Updates, gave voters from Herat, Balkh, and Wardak a chance to tell of their experiences during the election process, and of their fears for the future. This was also one of the very few articles produced by any media outlet that spoke of fraud by both major candidates.

Most reports highlighted ballot-box stuffing by the campaign of President Hamed Karzai, but few were privy to the direct voter intimidation practiced by supporters to Karzai’s chief rival, Dr Abdullah Abdullah.

In general, the election coverage produced by the IWPR team is a powerful testimony to the courage and determination of Afghan journalists, as well as to their increasing levels of professionalism.

IWPR Project Review - July/August 2009

Special Newspaper for Kurdish Ballot

The July 25 elections in Iraqi Kurdistan were also comprehensively covered in a groundbreaking IWPR project. A large team of journalists worked together to produce a daily newspaper published in two Kurdish dialects over a 20-day period around the elections. Metro, a 16-page tabloid, was the product of hard work by 80 journalists and over 25 photojournalists, drawn from more than 16 independent and party media outlets in the region.

Metro cover, 03-Aug-09. © IWPR

“Metro sought to prove that Kurdish media can work shoulder to shoulder with the global press, achieving the same high standard and avoiding political affiliation,” said Hiwa Osman, Metro’s editor-in-chief. “By leaving no space for journalists’ personal opinions, the paper tried to provide a trustworthy source of news for officials and voters.”

Wrya Hama-Tahir, a journalist who worked on Metro as a feature editor, said the paper stood out from the rest of the region’s press.

“Metro is new in Kurdish journalism, especially in terms of its form. There is nothing like it among the other newspapers,” he said.

In the Arab part of Iraq, another IWPR-produced paper and radio programme, also called Metro, had a more personal impact. A report, Basra Plagued by Mine Menace, told the story of victims from Shatt al-Arab, a village along the Iran-Iraq border in Basra province where some 400 people out of the population of 2,500 had been injured by mines. The report focused on Sadiya Khalaf Lafta, an amputee who said she had never married because she lost her leg to a mine 15 years ago.

IWPR reporters in Basra and Baghdad investigated and their story was published as an Iraqi Crisis Report in English, Arabic and Kurdish and picked up by Radio Nawa, a popular national news station. Deeply moved after hearing the story, Hawar Mustafa, the general director of Sulaimaniyah’s emergency hospital in northern Iraq, offered to start treating the victims of Shatt al-Arab. Kamal Jacob, the manager of the Centre for Artificial Limbs in Basra, also said the report prompted his clinic to look into providing home visits for victims or find ways of bringing them to the centre.

IWPR Project Review - July/August 2009

Caucasus: Building Capacity

In a two-month project over the summer, IWPR’s Tbilisi office took 64 journalists from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to see areas damaged by the August 2008 Russia-Georgian war, resulting in more than 80 reports in the three countries’ electronic and print media.

Participants meeting refugees.© IWPR

Throughout July and August, the journalists visited 12 villages outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and met more than 50 officials and aid workers, as well as refugees. “When we were entering the war-damaged villages, dozens of people came to meet us. They told us stories that have not been covered in the press. I am very grateful to IWPR that we had an opportunity to go into the conflict zones,” said Anna Tutberidze, a journalist from the Interpressnews agency.

The group even managed to reach areas previously inaccessible to journalists, such as Perevi, a Georgian village controlled by Russian and Ossetian forces since the 2008 war.

“The IWPR mission has given me a chance not only to approach the village’s borders, but also to enter it and talk to the people who live there,” Tutberidze continued. “I guess I am lucky to have been able to do so, since precious few possess a real picture of the situation in the territories lost as a result of the war.”

Another Georgian project, which ended this summer, both succeeded in boosting regional journalists’ newsgathering ability and also left behind a durable network of media professionals.

The Georgia Regional Media Network project started with 16 print and radio journalists and grew to include some 180 active participants over its two years of operation.

The output of the project included a radio programme, Accent, a website, a photojournalism site and a blog. The network held seven round-table discussions involving over 200 people, and more discussions took place as part of the training workshops and exchange visits.

“The regional journalists have made considerable changes in their professional growth. I was actively involved in the process and think this project was a perfect example of how a network should work,” said Yuri Storojuk, project trainer and consultant from Ukraine.

I thought I would have difficulty communicating with the Azeri journalists, but now I see people in them, not the enemy. Also, thanks to the seminar, I now know how careful I should be when reporting a conflict “Project coordinators managed to form a good team of young and motivated journalists, and the technical and thematic output was of high quality.”

The project covered eight regions of Georgia, included reporters from the disputed areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Programmes were able to straddle the conflict line, in a way impossible for most Georgian media. Abkhazian journalists regularly wrote articles for the project’s website and prepared their own radio reports. For two years, these materials were Georgia’s only really objective source of information about Abkhazia.

During the project, the journalists studied their countries’ ethnic and religious minorities, visiting the regions where they are concentrated, and learning about their fellow citizens.

“I am ashamed to say that before I joined the project I had looked down on all non-Georgians and viewed them as enemies,” said Nino Chabashvili from Kakheti region.

“Now I know that they are people just like us, with hopes, fears and joys just like ours. And I know what I can do for them – write frequently about their problems to show the reader how wrong it is to think about them the way I used to do.”

As the project period coincided with several critical events in Georgia, including mass protests, two elections and the 2008 war, it provided an important source of unbiased and accurate information. During the war, a blog launched by IWPR’s Georgian office was the top Russian-language blog, according to World Press ratings.

IWPR worked to bridge more divisions through a workshop for young journalists from Armenia and Azerbaijan, held on August 20-22, which covered both conflict reporting techniques and ways to overcome personal prejudices.

Over the course of the seminar, part of IWPR’s Neighbours programme, the journalists visited Georgia’s war-damaged region of Shida Kartli, received a lecture on conflict resolution, and studied conflict reporting. They conducted practical exercises and wrote articles.

“When I first heard that the seminar would be about conflicts, I thought that would be more than I could cope with,” said Armenian journalist Gayane Avahian. “Happily, our trainer was a psychologist, and she explained in detail to us what a conflict was.”

Azeri journalist in Karaleti. © IWPR

“On my way here, I thought I would have difficulty communicating with the Azeri journalists, but now I see people in them, not the enemy. Also, thanks to the seminar, I now know how careful I should be when reporting a conflict.”

They visited the Berbuki refugee settlement, met officials from the Gori district administration, and spent time in the villages of Karaleti and Ergneti on the administrative border between Georgia and South Ossetia.

It resulted in the production of some dozen television and radio reports, as well as articles in newspapers in both Azerbaijan and Armenia. And young journalists from both sides studied and socialised together.

“One of the most tragic things that has happened in the 15-year stalemate over Karabakh is that Armenians and Azerbaijanis no longer interact so that each side dehumanises the other,” said Leah Kohlenberg, Media Trainer at IREX, which helped IWPR to publish supplements in Armenia.

“It's not just about politics: there is much in common culturally and socially for the two countries and this is being lost as both sides become more deeply entrenched in their positions. That's why these supplements are so important.”

IWPR Project Review - July/August 2009

Monitoring Human Rights in Central Asia

In Central Asia, an IWPR project to provide human rights training to journalists across Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan, organised a series of training seminars in both countries as part of the Central Asia Human Rights Reporting Project aimed at building bridges between regional media and the human rights community.

The events took place in the southern Kyrgyz city of Jalalabad, the capital Bishkek and in the Kazak city of Almaty, and focused on the monitoring of human rights in state institutions such as prisons, as well as introducing modern concepts of human rights and key conventions.

The problematic issue of NGOs in Turkmenistan was also highlighted. IWPR reported that nothing had changed for Turkmen civil society groups in more than two years since incoming Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov promised to relax rigid restrictions.

IWPR’s report opened up the debate on how unregistered Turkmen NGOs find it hard to be recognised by the international donor community and therefore miss out on funding, said Vyacheslav Mamedov, head of the émigré Civic Democratic Union of Turkmenistan.

“What’s important [is that the IWPR] article reports about various civil society groups facing such problems and covers different parts of Turkmenistan,” he said.

“It is of a great interest not only for a foreign reader but also for the active part of Turkmen society that does not have the possibility to get reliable information about NGOs experiencing registration problems.”

IWPR Project Review - July/August 2009

Assessing ICC’s Impact in Africa

As part of its outreach work, IWPR Netherlands went to the city of Bukavu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, to talk to people on the ground about the impact of the Thomas Lubanga trial.

Thomas Lubanga. © ICC

The Lubanga project is a joint initiative of IWPR and the Open Society Justice Initiative, OSI, and includes a website featuring daily reports from the courtroom as well comment and analysis.

The team met a wide range of civil society leaders and students to tell them about the reporting project and canvas their views on the International Criminal Court, ICC.

The consensus was that the ICC was having little impact on the ground because of the slowness of its legal proceedings and its failure to communicate with local people about the trial or its investigations.

NGO worker Yvette Kabuo Tsongo from Réseau des Femmes Pour la Défense des Droits et la Paix told IWPR that Congolese are losing confidence in the ICC because of its poor visibility.

This issue was highlighted in a special IWPR report which criticised the court for its lack of accessibility. Civil society activists, journalists and lawyers are frustrated that they do not have enough information about the court, and are struggling to disseminate news to the general population.

The report received widespread praise from NGOs.

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, from the OSI, said that, in his view, those who are committed to the work of the ICC need to monitor it closely, criticise it constructively and hold it accountable to its mandate.

“I see the article as one such effort to ensure that the ICC lives up to its roles. I do not think it's an accident that since that [IWPR] article my colleagues and I over here have received some outreach inquiries and communications from the court and court staff appear to have got a bit more serious in outreach visits to different locations in Africa,” he said.

IWPR Project Review - July/August 2009

ICTY: Leading Academic Praises Special Report

IWPR’s other work in the Hague was also welcomed by journalists and analysts across the Balkans following the end of the key trial of two Bosnian Serbs, Milan and Sredoje Lukic. The cousins were indicted for the horrific crimes committed in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad at the beginning of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

The accused Milan Lukic. © ICTY

Dejan Milenkovic, assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade and a member of the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, said IWPR reporting “can help re-establish mutual trust among different ethnic groups in the region and for that reason [the reports] are necessary and extremely important”.

“I’ve learned a lot from [the Lukic trial] report, things I didn’t know before. There should definitely be more stories like this in the media, because without facing the past, there cannot be true reconciliation in the region,” he said.

An IWPR special report on the uncertain future of the international judges and prosecutors engaged by the Bosnian State Court was republished and debated by several leading legal and rights associations in Europe and the United States.

It explored how while politicians from Republika Srpska argued that the country should be left to run its own courts, local and international observers warn that if the Bosnian parliament fails to vote to retain the staff, the work of the country’s war crimes court could be seriously undermined.

This is the most comprehensive, fairest treatment of the issue that I have seen or heard in any media. The report was republished by Human Rights in Geneva, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia and The American Bar Association, ABA, the world's largest professional organisation with a membership of over 400,000.

Robert Donia, professor of history at the University of Michigan, said that the article gave “a broad, balanced view of a contemporary issue that is currently before the legislative bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and as a reader it enabled me to understand the issue better and to appreciate the views of various stakeholders in the debate.

“This is the most comprehensive, fairest treatment of the issue that I have seen or heard in any media.”

IWPR Project Review - July/August 2009

Pakistani Students Hone Analytical Skills

In Pakistan, IWPR’s youth project, Open Minds, received an enthusiastic response from students keen to develop their analytical skills and learn the principles of journalism.

The scheme is working in 42 educational institutions including 12 madrassas, religious schools known for their conservative approach. But IWPR teachers said they were using Islamic principles and stories from the Quran in their lessons.

Government Girls High School Umerzai. © IWPR

Sudhir Ahmad Afridi, a project trainer at the Madrassa Darul Quran Namak Mandi in Pakistan’s north-western city of Peshawar, said he had pointed to anecdotes from the Quran and the life of the prophet Muhammad to explain basic journalistic principles.

“For example, someone once asked the prophet while he was riding a horse how many legs did his horse have. The prophet Muhammad did not respond from the top of the horse as he was on its back, but came down and counted the legs and then said that his horse had four legs. This is a lesson that every journalist should speak or write only after getting accurate facts rather than false stories or hearsay,” Sudhir said.

Students were also encouraged to develop critical thinking and knowledge of international affairs through the project’s in-school discussion clubs. In July, several schools and madrassas in the southern city of Karachi held sessions on “Human Rights in Islam”, each of which was attended by about 70 students, and in five schools in Swat, discussion clubs began to address the history of human rights.