Workshop for Journalists On Reporting Women's Issues from Conflict Affected Areas

Organised by Sancharika Samuha Nepal

18-19 April 2005, Pokhara

Sancharika Samuha, with the support of FES Nepal organized a two-day residential workshop on "Reporting on Women Issues From Conflict affected areas" on 18th and 19th April 2005 at Pokhara, Kaski. Training was provided to 50 participants representing various print and electronic media in and around conflict affected areas of Pokhara, Baglung, Tahanu, Parbat, Arghakhachi and Mygdi. The resource persons for the training were Babita Basnet, senior journalist and Editor of Ghatana Ra Bichar, along with Ramkrishna Regmi, conflict specialists and senior journalist. Beside them, two local journalists Hari Narayan Gautam and Deepak Gautam jointly presented their paper on challenges and problems faced by journalists outside the capital. In the program Country Representative of FES Dev Raj Dahal was also present. Although various programmes had been organized on gender and media before, but this type of two-day residential programme on gender and conflict reporting was a new of its kind. The program mainly centered on the present situation of the country and how media can play its active and responsible role to cope with it.

Inaugural Session:

The resource person of the program Babita Basnet welcoming the participants highlighted the objectives and importance of the training. She explained the present scenario of the country and how women are specially affected from it. Though lives of every individual are affected by conflict but it is the women who suffer doubly and hence they are more affected by it. They not only have to bear the pain of loosing their near and dear ones but also at the same time have to bear the burden of responsibility of running their households. The plight of displaced people is more pathetic. In such a situation, role of media becomes more vital. Whatever news on conflict is reported they origin more from outside districts than from Kathmandu. Therefore, local journalists have vital role to play in this regard. She also added that it is high time that local journalist should be more gender-sensitive and try to bring more news coverage from woman's perspective.

Speaking on the Occasion, Country representative of FES Dev Raj Dahal informed the participants about the area of work where FES is concentrated, background about the organization and its mandate. Giving the definition of conflict and the reason why it happens he said that conflict only affects the weaker session of the society and the country as a whole. He added that during the conflict situation media has a greater role to play. Media, in one hand, has the power to pacify the conflict situation and on the other it can also aggravate the situation as a whole. He said that FES has taken the issue of women as the cross cutting theme. He also pointed out that conflict occurs not due to one reason. It has number of reasons in its fold. Similarly for its solution too there exists number of avenues and which needs to be framed and articulated.

Senior journalist and resource person, Ram Krishna Regmi delivering his remarks on the occasion said that issues related to women are the social issues and hence if any journalist writes on it then the whole society would be awarded by it. He gave emphasis that newsroom should not leave aside such a critical issue and journalists should at the same time be more sensitive while reporting on them.

Similarly speaking on the occasion, President of Federation of Nepalese Journalist, Kaski branch Rabindra Bastola said that journalists should also give importance to issues related to displaced people due to conflict. He expressed his gratitude to FES and Sancharika Samuha for raising such issue before the journalists.

The outgoing President of FNJ Kaski, Punya Poudel who was also present in the ceremony said that district level journalists require this type of training where they could learn the technique of conflict reporting covering every aspect of it.

Likewise, Vice president of FNJ, Kaski Badri Binod Pratik said that women have suffered most due to the ongoing conflict situation. Women have become widows at an early age and children have become orphans in so many incidents. Most of the men and the youths fled the villages for fear of forceful recruitment from the Maoists and the fear of the army labeling them as collaborators with the Maoists. This left the women from the villages to take over all the responsibilities of the household as well as to tender to the fields and the livestock and look after the children as well. He also cited the example of women taking up the work of plowing and putting sheds in their houses climbing the roof top all by themselves, the work which previously were done by men folks and women were not supposed to do.

Working Sessions

Session One:

Paper Presentation "Issues of conflict in media"

The first session of the day started with the introduction of the participants. In the program Journalists of both print as well as electronic media from Pokhara, Baglunj, Myagdi, Parbat and Tanahu took part.

Initiating the working session, Babita Basnet informed the participants about the aspect that would be covered in the training program. She presented a paper "Issues of conflict in media" prepared on the basis of findings of media monitoring conducted by Sancharika Samuha.

Through her paper she informed the participants that in the media issues related to women from the conflict area are largely published and covered in the media. Similarly news related to rape and sexual harassment on women in this situation is also getting highlighted on large scale through media. She took this as a positive approach as this portrays the true situation of women in these areas.

There are increasing news related to widows of people who died due to confrontation between Maoists and security forces. Here also news of widows of arm personnel is getting more highlighted than that of the Maoists. She said that as journalists could develop easy access to the police personnel it becomes easy to report conflict. But, it is difficult to cover the news of Maoists side.

In her paper she also mentioned that media persons are also busy covering news on women who have suffered various forms of mental and physical abuse, rape and other human rights violation by both Maoists and government security forces. Security forces and the Maoists have forcibly used women as informants. Rape, torture and killings of family member have grave psychological impact on women and the status of refugee women are also covered in the media. It is also seen that more and more women are getting victimized or killed in the ambush kept by Maoist.

She informed that most of the features and news / issues related to women of conflict areas comes from outside the capital collected by local journalists. A Large number of news are based on field reporting of the incidents that have taken place. It is not at all an easier task for the local journalists to collect information from the actual field condition where the incidence has occurred. They should take much precaution while covering news related to women and children who have been victimized. This needs greater amount of sensitivity on their part. It is not only their duty to project the event but at the same time they should be more sensitive towards issues depending upon its nature. They should inform people following the five basic W's of reporting i. e. What, When, Why, How, Where? Journalists should always consider these 5 W's as the fundamental of their professional ethics. She also said that while covering any news on conflict journalists should always take into consideration information on fundamental rules to be followed by the fighting parties, nature of incidence, status of victim and his/her psychological condition. Apart from it authenticity of source providing the information should be also checked and gender sensitivity should be followed as well.

Floor Discussion

Immediately after the paper presentation the floor was made open to the participants. During the open floor participants threw some of their queries to the resource person based on her presentation. They also took the platform to share their experience as well.

Dinesh Regmi, Reporter Kantipur Daily, Pokhara:
Shared the incidence of a place called Landruk in the region where a prominent women leader was killed and whose reporting was covered by him.

Ghanashaym Khadka, Reporter Beni:
Informed about the problems faced by the single women of the villages affected by conflict and the challenges he has to face while reporting on the issue.

During this session reporters hailing from the Maoist affected shared their experiences with the participants. Similarly journalist from Pokhara namely Badri Binod Pratik, Punya Poudel, Rabindra Bastola commented on the paper. During the session live discussion took place on the present conflict situation and the role of media.

Dev Raj Dahal:
Commenting at the end of the session Dev Raj Dahal, Country Representative FES said that journalists could become a part of the conflict or a part of solution depending on the selection and evaluation of information they report. This is the reason media freedom is central to understand the state of the nation. Responsible journalists deal with conflict occurring in everyday life and report the societal feedbacks into the circulation of power and its resistance seeking to nurture normative political order based on dialogue, negotiation, consensus and peace.

He said that what has media learned from the seven years of violent conflict and tragedies and what message did they convey to the Nepalese citizens? Where do journalists stand in the conflict? How can a violent conflict be transformed into a non-violent phase? What are its legitimate mechanisms? How can "balanced reporting" be obtained? How can media provide common grounds for contending actors for agreement? How can all conflicting parties return to a common vision, determination and patience? How media can help achieve democratic peace?

Speaking on the role of reporting, he said that Media could inflame conflict by circulating "negative message," in society. It can also become a messenger of peace, reconciliation and unity of people. This is the reason professionalism and credibility of journalists is absolutely essential to understand the sinews of media power. Of course, media power works in multiple ways. What is the reference point of journalists in the conflict-human values, public interests, pecuniary instinct, class interest or geopolitical considerations? Where do they fit into the diverse political spectrum and social hierarchies? Obviously, the most important mission of reporting events is to assume public interests into account and renew human sensitivity during conflicts.

He added that the pattern and identity of media ownership are other two important considerations for their conflict sensitivity. Because sectoral perspective of the media tends to absolutize the differences, breeds conflict and does not grasp the wholeness of the issue. In a situation of political uncertainty, what is critically important is how political actors can achieve common good together, not what they oppose.

He also said that in plural societies like Nepal, the watchdog function of media narrows the knowledge gap, helps to capture the diversity of perspectives and gives voice to the voiceless' people's desire for social change.
Responsible press tries to bring knowledge to the public, provides a voice for the citizens to be heard and heeded, helps build public consensus to bring desired social transformation and enables the government institutions to perform. In a situation of violent conflict, media's role lies in debating objectively about the health of the country and people, framing and phrasing conflicts in a rational manner, offering concrete options rather than just criticism of actors, and furnishing practical initiatives to the conflicting parties to resolve their conflicts of various kinds-structural, manifest, perceptual and latent.

He added that journalists could contribute to conflict management by providing democratic space for dialogue, mobilizing public opinion on the desirability of non-violent conflict transformation and focusing on the accountability of leaders for their actions. They can also offer the analysis of the causes, options and possible solutions of the conflict.

Session Two:

During the Second Working session of the day Senior Journalist and Resource person Ram Krishna Regmi presented his paper entitled " You" report victims of conflict; "They" will re build the Society.

Regmi said that press persons do not build or rebuild society themselves. They rather help others to do the job by reporting properly and appropriately. Their concentration on reporting - telling the true tale of conflict, communication the real plight of people, digging the basic issues, finding a comfortable way out of the clash could be the key to open series of opportunities in the conflict ridden society. Reporters do possess power to transform helpless victims of conflict into dynamic builders of peace. Their productions could ignite the process of crafting an outlet in the dark tunnel of war.

He said that since the trio reporting i.e. reporting, women issues and conflict has their own specific features; they expect practicing journalists to have full understanding of the same. Reporting is a tool developed by press to inform people as per their right to know; it has to be performed bearing in mind the trust citizens have placed on the fourth Estate. Women's issues are human issues. They are the agenda of the society and they deserve un-discriminated and un-biased deal, they can neither be ignored nor looked down upon as second-class citizens concern or less priority theme.

Conflict is a special situation in which violence arrests laws, psychology panic hijacks confidence and enmity is pumped into conventional human or community bond. This ultimately results in the paralysis of what is generally called walks of national life.

He said that reasons leading to conflict in Nepal could be many: the prominent one is the sense of inequality, discrimination, hate and deprivation that sections of population felt for centuries. Restoration of democracy in 1990 could not address this feeling and this further intensified popular frustration. Political leaders provoked the ambitions of people without supplying means to satisfy them. This fueled opposition, which took over time the shape of present conflict.

Speaking on the role of reporters he said that reporting by nature is a field job of collecting facts and passing on the same to the public. All rules that reporting has to follow are so tough that they make reporters jobs highly vulnerable in war. Getting the women's issues such as displacement, security, sexual violence, and access to medical care and food, detention, disappearance coverage is really challenging.

He added that the basic purposes of reporting the issue as:

• Raise awareness on specific gender concerns
  
• Establish the platform for a dialogue.
  
• Strengthen partnership among major stakeholders.
  
• Explore on a sustainable manner ways to build peace.
  
• Prevent or alleviate sufferings.

Problems facing reporters are varied;

• Tracing source of news and verifying the information.
  
• Which information to trust.
  
• Knowing the actors of conflict and their specific roles.
  
• The helpless state of the innocent who get trapped in conflict, difficulty in approaching them their fear in voicing pain.
  
• Problem to move around for exploring the reality.
  
• Negative impact of violence.
  
• Lack of regard for the reporting compulsion of press.
  
• Use of press for psychological war through the practice of hand out information.

Speaking on the conflict management he said that it could be done in a non-transparent manner. It is difficult for press people to get into it easily. But they should make efforts to have access to information. Conflict reporters particularly on women's issues should have complete faith in the following concepts:

• Conflict is a special situation for reporting.
  
• Women suffer most from its impact.
  
• Women could contribute to solving the conflict and peace building.
  
• Difference of conflict can be acknowledged and appreciated.
  
• Conflict can unlock opportunity for positive change.
  
• When the conflicting parties build on one another's strength to find solutions, a climate is created that nurtures individuals self worth and opportunities for fulfillment of each individual's needs.
  
• Conflict should not allow women's problems to be suppressed.

Therefore, he said that media persons should utilize the method of framing in reporting the women' issues and stick to general principals of journalism.
Framing serves the following main purposes:

• To define problem.
• To diagnose causes.
  
• To make sound judgments on the basis of equality and justice.
  
• To suggest remedies.

Concluding his presentation he said that to Nepali reporters in conflict zones there should be no women's issue that could be so good as to exaggerate coverage or so bad as to suppress publicity.

The presentation made by the senior journalist Mr. Ram Krishna Regmi was appreciated and approved by all the participants. After the brief queries on the paper the session for the day was ended.

Second Day

Session one: Paper Presentation

The second day of the workshop was initiated with the presentation of paper jointly prepared by two journalists from Baglung namely Hari Narayan Gautam and Deepak Gautam. The paper was mainly based on the types of problems that local level journalists are facing in the present conflict situation. It also covered the aspect of status of conflict, challenges of reporting on women issues from conflict areas and the struggle taken up by the journalist to cope with the situation.

The author highlighted the impact of conflict on women. Therefore, reporting on and in conflict is a real problem to the journalists working in field. Through their paper they also tried to portray the hardship both social and economic that journalists have to face to carry on their profession with utmost sincerity. Amidst such hardship to take up the challenge of covering such sensitive issues related to women is really a tough job.

Concluding their paper they suggested that media should play an active role in helping in establishing sustainable peace in the country. For this, freedom of the press is essential which must be granted at any cost.

Comment:
Commenting on the paper, journalist Ms. Durga Bhandari said that authors truly depicted the problems faced by reporter in collecting news related to women from the conflict situation. Interviewing a woman victim and collecting information of the event needs lots of sensitivity on the part of the reporter. It is seen that whatever news are coming on women issues from the conflict affected areas, women journalists mostly collect them from the field situation. Therefore, they are lesser in number compared to other news from the conflict areas.

Open floor:
During the open floor of the session participants raised the need of fellowship required for acquiring training on conflict reporting. Similarly, they also suggested the need of press code for reporting from the conflict areas.

Session Two: Experience Sharing

The second session of the day was exclusively kept for sharing the experiences of the participating journalists who have been engaged on reporting from the field on events related to conflict. From the discussion the following information were derived:

• Due to conflict large numbers of innocent people have been killed and at the same time reporters face difficulty in collecting authentic information about those incidents.
  
• Great number of problems raised when journalist went to the field to collect news on issues related to women victims in conflict areas especially about the incidence of sexual assaults.
  
• Due to fear of the armed personnel as well as the Maoists do not come forward to give genuine information about the events to the reporters.
  
• Physical torture faced by the journalists on reporting news from the conflict areas.
  
• Problems faced by the journalist to send news at the national level media about the happening in the field due to non-functioning of telephone / fax and other communication facilities.
  
• Due to the suspicious environment created out of conflict people do not give true information.
  
• Due to economic, geographic and communication problem reporters are finding it difficult to collect news from the conflict affected areas.
  
• Displaced people, due to physical trauma hesitate to provide information to the reporters.
  
• Security problem for the journalists.
  
• Due to fear of social stigma women hardly come out and tell their suffering specially about the sexual abuse to the reporters and due to it very less number of news on such cases are reported.
  
• Due to fear victim hesitate to name the pain inflictor.
  
• Women are threatened with pervasive security checks during travel and random household searches by the Maoists and security forces.
  
• Lesser number of conflicts reporting training to the journalists.

From the session single voice from the participants came out on the requirement of conflict reporting training. They requested FES and Sancharika Samuha to organize such trainings in near future specially targeting the local level journalist who actually go to the field to collect information. This would not only enhance their capacity but also would also help them to become more sensitive towards the issue while covering them.

Session Three: Group Discussion

Group Discussion was the last session of the day where participants were broadly divided into three groups. During this session the groups were given three different topic to work on:

Group One: Situation of displaced people in conflict areas
Here the participants were suppose to discuss on:

• Situation/ condition of displaced people
  
• Status of women.
  
• Role of media

Participants came up with the following suggestions while discussing the topic:

Situation/ condition of displaced people

• Lack of houses for living.
  
• Problem of fooding.
  
• Lack of employment opportunity.
  
• Problem of Social amalgamation.
  
• Economic problem.
  
• Problem of carrying on traditional norms.
  
• Mental Pressure
  
• Problem of water and Sanitation.
  
• Problem of education / Schooling.
  
• Increase in criminalization.
  
• Increased migration to foreign land in search of work.
  
• Used by the vested parties.

Status of women

• Additional workload.
  
• Sexual harassment.
  
• Forceful involvement in sex trade.
  
• Work exploitation.
  
• Increased pressure due to additional household responsibility.
  
• Problem of educating girl child.
  
• Insecurity.

Role of media

• Field reporting giving information on their status.
  
• Identification of actual problem.
  
• Increased publication of features/articles focusing on solving the problem.
  
• Creating network of the local journalists and bringing the voice of the displaced people in a stronger manner.

Group Two: Additional workload befallen on women due to conflict
Here the participants were supposed to discuss on:

• Empowerment opportunity
  
• Exploitation and sufferings.
  
• Role of Media personnel
  

Participants came up with the following suggestions while discussing the topic:

Empowerment opportunity

• Enhancement of decision-making capacity.
  
• Leadership Opportunity
  
• Enhancement of self-confidence.
  
• Economic empowerment.

Additional Workload

• Additional workload of agriculture / farming.
  
• Increased responsibility in social work.
  
• Increased responsibility on rearing their children in the absence of their male counterpart.
  
• Living in fear.
  
• Increase in traditional social responsibility.
  
• Actively involved for securing livelihood.
  
• Complete responsibility of children.

Exploitation and sufferings

• Exploitation of labour as they are deprived from getting right remuneration for their work.
  
• Physically and mentally tortured.
  
• Pessimism.
  
• Lack of assistance in solving their problem.
  
• Hamper in children's education.

Role of Media personnel

• Publication and distribution of materials that would be helpful to women victims.
  
• Encouragement to the widows.
  
• Helping in managing problems related to women in conflict areas.
  
• Discouragement of social division.
  
• Encouraging women leadership through their writing and publications.

Group Three: Requirement of physiological trauma center for counseling in conflict areas
Here the participants were supposed to discuss covering the following:

• Victims and psychological trauma
  
• Impact of trauma on women
  
• Role of media

Participants came up with the following suggestions while discussing the topic for news collection:

Victims and psychological trauma

• Do not want to talk freely.
  
• Social impact.
  
• Displacement.
  
• Impact on the life of rural and urban areas.

Impact of trauma on women

• Fail to express their pain.
  
• Mental pain.
  
• Physical weakness

Role of media

• Finding the cause of conflict.
  
• Acting as a bridge between the two conflicting parties.
  
• Creation of peace talk friendly environment.
  
• Increased reporting of news that will enhance confidence among the people.

Conclusion

In her concluding remarks at the end of the workshop Babita Basnet asked the participants to put forward the strategies journalists should follow in future while reporting on the women and children victims of conflict. The participants suggested the following strategies that need to be implemented for the improvement of reporting on women and children in conflict areas:

1. Need of gender training to the reporters/ journalists.
2. Improve knowledge on the issue.
3. Putting an end to Human Rights abuse both by government and rebels.
4. Need for Press Freedom