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By Teresia Mutuku, Communications Officer and Web Manager, WACC  | | WACC has released a DVD on the theme of communicating for peace. The DVD, a first for WACC, is an educational resource for peace advocates and journalists about the importance of telling stories to communicate peace.
The DVD, produced in collaboration with United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada, comes out of WACC’s global Congress on Communication is peace held in Cape Town, South Africa, October 2008. Over 300 faith based and secular communicators and peace advocates from around the world attended. |
The DVD is built around five sub-themes. Each section offers interviews and commentaries from experts in the fields of peace journalism, communication rights, and gender justice and introduces key communication concepts and analysis. The sections also include case studies by rights advocates who work in conflict situations, offering practical approaches to putting those concepts into action and provocative questions encouraging engagement with the issues
The first section addresses the sub-theme peace journalism: communicating for peace in an interview with peace journalist, Jake Lynch from Australia and a peace educator from Brazil, Marcelo Rezende Guimarães. It also contains an interview with leading investigative journalist, Amy Goodman, who was honoured with WACC’s ‘Communication for Peace’ award 2008.
Goodman asserts that “we need media that build bridges, that don’t advocate for the bombing of bridges.” The section also presents a discussion with Netherlands based communication rights consultant, Cees Hamelink, who argues that peace journalists should report how people justify their violent acts.
The second section focuses on Telling the story: speaking for peace, in which a women rights advocate based in Uganda, Ruth Ojiambo-Ochieng, speaks about storytelling and empowerment as she shares her experiences in conflict-torn Northern Uganda, Liberia and Sudan. The section also focuses on media presentations of conflict in the USA and communicating peace in the Middle East.
The third section examines media and gender justice in interviews with UNIFEM’s ad interim Executive Director, Joanne Sandler andgender and media justice researcher, Margaret Gallagher. There are also three case studies focusing on media and gender in the Caribbean, Latin America and Pacific.
The fourth sub theme; communication rights and peace is tackled in interviews with Cees Hamelink and Australian based professor of communication, also former WACC staff, Pradip Thomas. The section further presents case studies of Aboriginal rights and communication as well as Haitian workers and the media in the Dominican Republic. The last section gives biblical insights on the theme of communication and peace, with Rev. Robert Haverluck , a professor of theology at the University of Winnipeg, Canada, responding to the question: What does the Bible say? He is known for his religious cartoons which have been widely published in both secular and religious publications. WACC is encouraging faith-based and secular peace advocates and journalists to use the DVD as an educational resource about the importance of telling stories in ways that contribute to conflict resolution and sustainable peace.
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