Raising Women's Voices - Peacebuilding

Susan McKay and Dyan Mazurana, University of Wyoming Laramie, Wyoming, USA

Vision, Impact& Limitations of Media Technology

In 1995, an indigenous campesina woman from southwestern Costa Rica, Paulina Bribri-Cabagras, made a call to Feminist International Radio Endeavours (FIRE), a woman-produced radio/Internet broadcasting station, to denounce a local transit policeman who was violently attempting to take away her ancestral land.

During her call she told of death threats she and her family had received and how for over 70 years the family had fought to keep their land. She also told of how people in the community trying to support her were intimidated and harassed. FIRE ran the story and contacted various women’s and human rights organizations to begin letter-writing campaigns. Pressure was put on Costa Rica's Minister of Security who called for an investigation and demanded that local police protect Bribri-Cabagras. According to Bribri-Cabagras:

Today, my ownership of the land I inherited from my family is mine and is respected! We indigenous women have a right to be respected; our right to our lands, our indigenous women’s rights to work the land have to be respected…I am thankful to these organizations, because they accompanied me, and a little path to justice was opened for me to tell people what I was going through….Mine is a voice that, so long as I am alive, no one will silence in denouncing this and other violations of our rights (Thompson & Suarez, pp. 12-13).

Women’s Peacebuilding

The relative newness of the term peacebuilding is reflected in that it is not used within the Platform for Action (PFA), the consensus statement adopted by 181 nations at the 1995 United Nations (UN) World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China. However, peace, women’s human rights, and violence against women are frequently discussed.

The PFA serves as a blueprint for women’s global leadership to advance women’s status and, overall, is a peacebuilding document (McKay & Winter, 1998). Soon after the Beijing conference, we became aware of how ubiquitous the term peacebuilding had become within the vocabulary of UN and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). As feminist peace researchers, we were curious about meanings attributed to peacebuilding since we surmised that senior policy-making men’s usage of the term (i.e., Boutros-Ghali, 1992) differed from that of women, especially those in NGOs and grassroots organizations. Therefore, we conducted a gender analysis of the meanings of peacebuilding at UN, NGO, and grassroots levels (Mazurana & McKay, 1999).

We concluded that women’s grassroots and NGOs’ peace-building is context specific and oriented toward processes such as communication and reconciliation. By context-specific we mean that issues that concern women in any region of the world will be similar but also distinct from those of women in other regions. For example, a unifying issue in most women’s peacebuilding is prevention of violence against women; how-ever, its specific expressions will vary according to the cultural context. Whereas prostitution and sex traffick-ing may be most salient in South Korea, the violence inherent in the current demo-lition of Palestinian women’s homes in Jerusalem may be a focus of women’s peace-building activities there.

Based upon our understanding of the contextualized and process-oriented nature of women’s grassroots and NGOs’ peacebuilding, we developed this broad definition:

Peacebuilding includes gender-aware and woman-empowering political, social, economic, and human rights. It involves personal and group accountability and reconciliation processes that contribute to the reduction or prevention of violence. It fosters the ability of women, men, girls, and boys in their own culture(s t) o p-romote conditions of nonviolence, equality, justice, and human rights of all people, to build democratic institutions, and to sustain the environment. (Mazurana & McKay, 1999, p. 9)

Intensified by international feminist movements and collaborative efforts among women to globalize their agendas and promote women’s empowerment, the importance of women’s involvement in building peaceful societies is increasingly recognized.

Our study of meanings of peacebuilding increased our appreciation for the importance of women’s use of media technology within the context of their peacebuilding work. Media technology is a crucial tool for "raising women’s voices" as important peacebuilding agents at local, regional, and global levels. Yet, we soon discovered that little has been written on this topic. The International Federation of University Women’s (IFUW) 1999 Peace Fellowship enabled us to research women’s use of media technology in peacebuilding.

Because of the broad array of media technologies, we limited our study to women’s peacebuilding activities within the contexts of radio, television, video, films, computers, and alternative technologies e.g., street productions. We avoided studying mainstream media and its content, such as newspapers, television, and film. Instead, we focused upon media technology used for organizing, preserving, and disseminating information. We collected information from women’s groups around the world and conducted field studies at the following sites: Radio for Peace International (RPI) and Feminist International Radio Endeavors (FIRE) in Costa Rica; International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), the Netherlands; Women’s International News Gathering Service (WINGS) in Austin, Texas, United States (U.S.); Search for Common Ground in Washington, DC, U.S.; Witness, a program of Lawyers for Human Rights in New York City, U.S.; the Women’s Media and Information Center in Tirana, Albania; Bat Shalom and the Jerusalem Center for Women in Israel; and the UNESCO Women and Culture of Peace Programme in Paris, France. We also met with Tamara Gordon, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) correspondent in London. Additionally, in Ghana, Israel, the Philippines, and South Korea we met with many individuals and NGOs using media technology to promote peacebuilding and human rights.

During our field research, we became more aware of the geographical differences in media access, computer technology, and technical assistance. For example, as Westerners, we have well-developed technological infrastructure for which we pay little because the technology is provided as part of our jobs. Rarely do we lose our phone connection. We do not spend long intervals pulling up a single electronic (E-mail) message nor do power outages shut down the system. Further, our ability to fluently understand and write English enables us to easily use E-mail and Internet communications.

Simultaneously, in Seoul, South Korea, NGOs have excellent technological infrastructure and computer equipment with E-mail access and World Wide Web (WWW) sites. Notably, the women’s NGOs frequently use internal Korean E-mail which is in the Korean language. Except for younger women who are more likely to be fluent, lack of proficiency in English hampers many women’s NGO’s ability to communicate with the larger international community of NGOs and women’s groups.

A counterpoint to the U.S. and South Korea is Ghana, where a computer-savvy woman, Lydia Ajono, who works for Ghana National Broadcasting, must go to a business center for E-mail access because her workplace has only a few, often nonfunctioning, computers. Ajono waits for a phone connection to get online. Once the connection is established, many minutes may pass before her first message emerges—sometimes only to lose the transmission so she must start again. During this time Ajono is assessed fees for the time she is online. Because Ajono speaks several languages and English is not her primary language, she must carefully compose her message. Thus, despite technical skills, Ajono’s ability to use electronic technology is greatly limited by the country’s infrastructure (i.e., lack of adequate electrical power and telephone lines), her time, and personal resources.

Media as Peace Technology

In fanning the flames of armed conflict and war, media technology such as radio and television, almost always controlled at all levels by men, has been used with great effectiveness to encourage human rights violations, genocide, and threaten international peace and security. In recent wars in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Kashmir, Chechnya, and Russia, media technology was manipulated and controlled in ways that incited violence and limited the public’s ability to obtain accurate information. Thus it is not an overstatement to claim that increasing access to media technology threatens to loosen the hold of some political leaders and groups. As a Rwandan technology expert succinctly explained:

[The] Internet is a powerful tool for access to information and exchange of information. Its utilization is still limited in Africa because of its cost, its present inaccessibility to the majority of the African population including women, and also the reluctance of political leaders to broaden its use because they fear it could be out of their control.(UNESCO, 1998, p. 10)

A Resolution by the UN General Assembly of the Declaration on a Culture of Peace (UN, 1999) recognized that ensuring a free flow of information at all levels and enhancing access thereto is integral to the fuller development of a culture of peace. Among proposed actions described in the Declaration, two are specifically applicable to our project: 1) Make effective use of the media for advocacy and dissemination of information on a culture of peace involving, as appropriate, the United Nations and relevant regional, national, and local mechanisms; and 2) Increase efforts to promote the sharing of information of new information technologies, including the Internet.

Considerable interest has been expressed in using media technology towards the positive goal of peacebuilding and in strengthening women’s participation in building peace. For example, the PFA states "Everywhere the potential exists for the media to make a far greater contribution to the advancement of women," and that "Women should be empowered by enhancing their skills, knowledge, and access to information technology" (UN, 1996, p. 133). Thus, around the world, grassroots organizations, NGOs, and UN agencies are recognizing the importance of effectively using media technology to promote peacebuilding. An expert group meeting on peace held in Manila, the Philippines, recommends in its final report:

Women and women’s groups should be encouraged and trained to make use of media techniques. Women’s video groups, local radio stations, and community radio stations, among others, should be given necessary support for their work and for exchange programs across borders by funding agencies inside and outside. Women and women’s groups should be encouraged and trained to make use of the UN system. In order for societies to develop capacities to understand and respect `the other,’ as an essential element of a culture of peace, women will need, as an interim measure, their own media to express their views and concerns. Both mainstream and alternative media should promote women’s concerns and interests and foster cross-gender dialogue.(UNESCO, 1995, pp. 20-21)

Likewise, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, a regional conference on strengthening women’s peace movements in Africa through greater communication stressed:

…the necessity for women to get information on situations of conflict and to establish confidence through appropriate networking. Women need to build [the] capacity to access information and to analyze obtained information in relation to conflict prevention, conflict management, and reconciliation… [There is also a need to strengthen] women’s peace initiatives by increasing easy access to quality information and information networks… In order to fill the gap between the present situation of Africa in communication technologies, there is a need to set up `focal points’ having access to Internet for the sake of grassroots women’s organizations, which should [also]continue to use indigenous means of communication to deliver their message. (UNESCO, 1998, pp. 4-5)

At multiple levels and in pragmatic ways, women’s use of media technology is thus being recognized as essential in promoting peacebuilding.

Women’s Peace Technology: From Simple to Complex

Women’s peacebuilding initiatives and the type of media technologies used vary according to cultural contexts, the types of audience being addressed, technical, social, and economic resources, and the country’s infrastructure. In this section, we highlight some ways women are using media technologies that range from simple to complex and provide examples from around the world. In the final section we describe four of the field sites we visited in order to further illuminate ways in which women use media to build peace.

Internationally, UNESCO’s Women and a Culture of Peace Programme supports women’s initiatives for peace with assistance for networking and information sharing. For example, a UNESCO-sponsored radio program in El Salvador, "Women and a Culture of Peace," brings opposing factions together to build a gender-sensitive culture of peace based on the development of self esteem, dialogue and overcoming violence. Women correspondents are responsible for radio program relevance, especially in deprived areas. The correspondents ensure that a broad variety of women's voices are heard (Breines, Gierycz, & Reardon, 1999).

At the Women’s Peace Center in Burundi, multiple activities to further ethnic reconciliation in the country include conflict resolution training and dialogue between Tutsi and Hutu women. Women learn simple technology such as how to use a fax machine or telephone. In conjunction with Studio Ijambo, the radio studio operated by Search for Common Ground (SCG) to reduce ethnic violence and counter hate radio, the Women’s Peace Center uses the opportunity presented by media technology to reach out to women all over the country with its programming.

In Croatia, the women’s human rights group B.a.B.e. (Be active, Be emancipated) makes extensive use of media technology to network with women, both in the Balkans and internationally, to promote women’s human rights. During the Serbian invasion and subsequent war in Kosovo, B.a.B.e. worked with contacts throughout the Balkans using the Internet and E-mail to keep women’s and human rights groups informed. B.a.B.e. also served as an electronic relay station to send messages out of Serbia from Serbian feminists critical of the Milosevic regime, the Serbian invasion of Kosovo, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) bombing of Serbia. B.a.B.e.’s most recent media project is Women Internet Networking (WIN). B.a.B.e. is organizing six WIN workshops to give women hands-on experience in using the Internet as a tool for advocacy, networking, communication, and gathering information (B.a.B.e., 1999). The goals of these training sessions are that women will recognize the importance and power of the Internet, use it effectively and interactively to further women’s human rights and their effective participation in their country, and establish networks in Croatia and internationally (B.a.B.e., 1999).

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, at the beginning of the war in Kosovo, the women of Medica, a women’s therapy center, set up tent clinics to provide care to war-traumatized women refugees flooding out of Kosovo. They were quickly overwhelmed by the number of refugees in need of their services. Calls for assistance went out to women’s and human rights’ groups over the Internet and E-mail from the autonomous Medica in London, B.a.B.e., Women’s Center Against Sexual Violence in Belgrade, Serbia, and the Women’s Center in Albania. The rapidity of response to calls for additional funding occurred because of collective action of international E-mail networks.

Many other programs are creatively using media technology in peacebuilding. For example, IFOR’s Women Peacemakers Program, the Netherlands, has enabled women to make video recordings of intercultural conflict resolution processes that are available from IFOR and provide role modeling. In the Philippines, Isis International-Manila (Isis), a women’s informa-tion training and communication center, teaches women technical skills for radio production and broadcasting. In South Korea and Israel, women raise funds to direct and produce independent films that bring attention to violence associated with militarization. They also organize film and art festivals to convey important peacebuilding messages.

Field Study Sites

Though our study included multiple field sites, we limit our description to four of these to convey the range of women’s use of media technology for peacebuilding. In a forthcoming publication we will report at length about women’s use of media technology in peacebuilding (McKay & Mazurana, 2000).

The Women’s Center in Tirana, Albania

The Women’s Center, established in 1994, is the only women’s information and documentation center in Albania and is one of a growing number of such centers worldwide. The Center coordinates women’s NGOs and gives assistance to them. The priorities of the Center are documentation, gender research and training, and publications. The presence of the Center is revolutionary within strongly patriarchal Albanian society, and the challenge for its staff is daunting. Little gender awareness exists in the country, and violence against women is a major problem. As was true at many sites, the word peacebuilding was not commonly used in describing the Center’s work, but women’s human rights were often discussed.

Housed in the center of the city in a building that belies the bleakness of its exterior, the Women’s Center is continually bustling with different activities involving the six staff members and many volunteers. Inside is a brightly painted and well-equipped facility with three computers, a copying machine, one phone line, an extensive library of primarily English-language books with an excellent collection of gender-related subjects, and a large conference table that often serves as the hub of Center activities. Center staff has about an hour of Internet time a day. The staff can also use Internet facilities at a media center nearby that has a satellite dish and thereby avoid phone connections to access the Internet, which are often unreliable.

The Women’s Center serves as a literary and video clearinghouse for information on women and gender. It also houses and distributes computerized, gender-segregated data, thus playing an important role in informing and shaping Albanian policy and projects (Women’s Center, April 1999). To help women and women’s organizations in the Balkans network more effectively, the documentation and information center maintains current information on women’s NGOs, their activities, projects, and staff. Frequently-updated computerized databases and an open-door policy enable easy access to data on women and gender not readily available elsewhere. The Center also trains women’s NGOs to more effectively use media to relay their messages.

Specific accomplishments of the Women’s Center include a training seminar on gender and media held in 1998 that was attended by representatives from 16 Albanian women’s organizations, an impressive turnout considering there are only about 30 active women’s organizations in Albania. The Center generated mainstream media coverage of its own 12-day campaign on violence against women in 1999, an important activity because coverage of women’s issues in Albania is rare, especially in areas of domestic violence and violence against women. That same year, the Center initiated a training project, the Regional Training Center. The project was designed to help Kosovar women professionals (e.g., scholars, lawyers, doctors, and engineers) to implement their own ideas and plans for reconstruction. Subjects included how to work with the media, various communications skills, and how to strengthen NGO capacities through media technology and networking (Women’s Center, October 1999).

Women’s International News Gathering Service (WINGS), Austin, Texas, U.S.

In a quiet suburban neighborhood in Austin, Texas, a small two- bedroom house bears a sign on the door that reads "Women at Work." Inside is Frieda Werden who, with limited assistance, runs WINGS, a radio news service by and about women from around the world. Now 14 years old, WINGS reports news about women’s activities in war, peace, politics, and labor, in environmental, feminist, and other grassroots movements, and in government, the United Nations, and elsewhere.

In a very real sense, WINGS programs that feature women’s own voices and analyses carry forth the maxim "giving voice to the voiceless." The programming format puts emphasis on women in their own countries speaking for themselves. Many of WINGS’ news reports come from women located in community, college, and pirate radio stations around the world. Some of the stories are also taken from Internet sites like that of FIRE. Werden regularly exchanges information with women reporters via E-mail, letters, and telephone, sending and receiving information. Notably, WINGS does not itself broadcast but is a syndicator to radio stations, as well as netcasters heard via the Internet.

The WINGS office is filled with electronic equipment for editing and duplicating tapes that women send. For about $500 gleaned from its own sparse budget, WINGS provides women reporters with the professional audio equipment needed to obtain broadcast-quality sound. In addition, WINGS pays reporters and producers royalties for use of their tapes, using funds from tape sales and small grants. Often WINGS is the first paying outlet for women who have been volunteer radio producers.

Several women provide assistance at WINGS, but Werden does the majority of the work and will typically spend 10 to 20 hours on a computer to complete each 29-minute report. WINGS distributes its tapes via several venues: 1) Pacifica radio satellite in the U.S.; 2) ComRadSat, an Australian community satellite; and 3) tapes mailed to subscribers. It also makes some programs available to download over the Internet, via www.oneworld.org/radio_news and hwww.radio4all.net. Shortwave Radio for Peace International (RPI) out of Costa Rica is one of the over 120 stations that subscribe to WINGS programming. Another international venue for hearing WINGS is a feminist radio station on the Internet www.amazoncityradio.com. Ample news can be heard on Real Audio, and tapes can be ordered through WINGS’s web site www.wings.org. The combination of distribution methods helps make women’s radio programming, so seldom part of mainstream radio, more readily accessible for international broadcast.

Important to note is that Werden exemplifies what we have often found about women using media technology for social justice: she is passionate and deeply absorbed in peacebuilding work and is extremely competent in using technology, gleaned through many years of work in public radio and other media venues.

Peacebuilding NGOs, Seoul, South Korea

Women Making Peace (WMP) is one among many NGOs working to build peace in South Korea and was the sponsor and organizer of our site visit. WMP was established in March 1997 to realize reunification and peace on the Korean peninsula and to make peace in Asia and the world. WMP’s membership numbers approximately 500, many who are professional women working with other women’s NGOs in Seoul. Membership includes a member of the South Korean Parliament, newspaper and broadcasting women, activists, and academics. The organization promotes social actions, and educational, solidarity, and research activities.

Women’s NGOs are working on complex peace-building issues in South Korea. Many of the efforts of these NGOs center on the consequences of the 55-year presence of U.S. military troops. These include crimes against Korean citizens, pollution of the environment, undermining of Korean culture, prostitution and sex trafficking, reunification of North and South Korea, remilitarization of states in Northeast Asia, and land mines in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). A central focus of activism is the effects of the U.S. military presence in South Korea and crimes soldiers perpetrate against Korean citizens, especially against the estimated 3,000 prostitutes around military bases in Seoul. About half of these prostitutes are Korean and the other half foreign. In conjunction with prostitution, sex trafficking and sex tourism pose serious problems. Women’s NGOs also campaign for the reduction of the defense budget and increase of social welfare; facilitate exchange visits, reconciliation and cooperation between North and South Korean women; participate in anti-war and anti-nuclear movements; work to foster human rights; support reunification; encourage media responsive-ness to gender and citizens’ interests; foster gender equality; publicize the situation of Comfort Women forced to sexually service Japanese military men during World War II and advocate for compensation by the Japanese government for their suffering; and provide humanitarian assistance to North Korean women.

Noteworthy within South Korea is how women’s NGO activities have blossomed during the decade of the 1990s so that their influence is increasingly felt in South Korean society. Women’s NGOs are at work within South Korea to urge governments and citizens to be more aware of difficult issues and potential solutions, injecting gender perspectives that have previously been missing. Interests represented by women’s NGOs are varied but cohesive because their collective activities fall within the rubric of peacebuilding within the South Korean context.

Media technologies within these women’s NGOs are found in virtually every office. Crowded, small spaces hold computers, fax, and copying machines. Most NGOs have E-mail access. Web sites, usually in Korean and English languages, are often created and maintained by volunteers. Additionally, highly talented and hard working women artists, film producers, and journalists use modalities such as the theater and art work, and have created a museum featuring Korean Comfort Women’s art and artifacts. They also produce film festivals, video documentaries, and women’s publications, including an innovative women’s newspaper. All of these activities revolve around the promotion and dissemination of their peacebuilding initiatives.

Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE), Costa Rica

FIRE is located in a small white house in Ciudad Colon, which can be found "across the street from the shoe store opposite the post office" (Maria Suarez, July 1999). The presence of computers and electronic equipment appears understated in this quiet atmosphere with its comfortable but simple furnishings. FIRE was established in 1991 to create a communication channel via shortwave radio where women’s diverse voices and issues would be heard by the international community (Women’s Health Journal, 1998). Radio was selected because of its widespread availability, low cost, and practicality; women could continue to do their work while listening to it. FIRE is run by a small, permanent staff of Latin American and Caribbean feminists committed to giving voice to the voiceless on a multitude of issues. For example, FIRE trains women on how to use tape recorders and broadcast equipment so that the control of the production is in the hands of women themselves, which sharply contrasts with the approach of most traditional media (Thompson & Suarez). In this way, FIRE provides important perspectives from young and old women, as well as indigenous people and others whose perspectives are not usually heard in mainstream media.

FIRE’s feminist environment enables local women to drop by to converse about issues of concern. Co-founders Maria Suarez Toro and Katherine Anfossi Gomez provide the vision and energy behind FIRE’s operations. Recently, FIRE expanded into broadcasting its reports via the Internet, using both text summaries and audio clips of women interviewers and interviewees. FIRE also began a women’s Internet radio program that combines traditional modern media venues. The Internet/radio technology makes it possible for "listeners" to read or listen to FIRE radio programming in either Spanish or English. Therefore, the programming has broader appeal for anyone with access to the Internet. This is only one of several media technology strategies that FIRE uses. The group also prints Web pages to send out via regular mail (www.fire.or.cr), issues a magazine, and takes media technology into the streets, where interviewers use audiotape recorders so women can tell their stories in their own voices. FIRE has broadcast live from important international events that affect women’s lives, including the UN Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 and the NGO Women’s Forum and 4th UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. In Beijing, FIRE ran the FIRE-PLACE, a 54-hour live shortwave broadcast that featured interviews with 140 conference participants from around the world. The FIRE-PLACE enabled women at the conference to have their voices heard around the globe (FIRE, 1995).

Other examples of FIRE’s role in promoting peace and human rights includes their part in the halting of a massive garbage dump. Linking with local Costa Rican women environmentalists, FIRE ran horseback radio eco-tours of the area where they interviewed local people living on the proposed dump site. The campaign drew international attention, and the local women and men succeeded in having the area set aside as a nature reserve. Another impressive story recalls when the leader of the Zapatista Movement in Mexico, Comandandte Marcos, accidentally picked up FIRE when he was hiding in the bush trying to find news about the fighting between his troops and government forces. Instead of information on the results of the combat, Marcos heard a FIRE interview with Marcela Lagarde, a Mexican feminist scholar, on the marginalization of women in revolutionary movements in Latin America, including the recent Zapatista movement. Marcos later contacted FIRE who put him in contact with Lagarde who agreed to serve as the Gender Advisor to the Zapatista movement (Thompson & Suarez).

Vision, Impact and Limitations of Media Technology

When we began our study, we expected to find few examples of women using media technology for peacebuilding. Instead, we discovered numerous women’s peacebuilding activities that employ media technology in many sophisticated and visionary ways. At the sites we visited, most women’s peacebuilding groups had access to technology such as computers with E-mail and Internet communication. List-serves were being used to communicate with international networks organized around specific issues. An example is the Asian Center for Women’s Human Rights (ASCENT) where Executive Director Indai Lourdes Sajor has developed a list-serve about women and armed conflict. Although use of electronic communication and the Internet have great potential for promoting peacebuilding initiatives worldwide, relatively few of the world’s women have access to basic computer services, let alone the newest technologies (Isis, 1999). Peacebuilding efforts must therefore also continue to rely on more traditional technologies to reach women such as drama, film, plays, stories, dancing, poems, lectures combined with songs, demonstrations, and even music concerts.

A key strategy in women’s peacebuilding work is the use of multiple levels of media technology. Isis, in the Philippines, is an excellent example of an NGO using both simple and sophisticated technologies to build peace. Isis recognizes that new information and communication technologies are rapidly changing socioeconomic and political power relations. They use radio because it reaches women in the provinces, creating a much wider audience than is possible with print and electronic mediums. Isis also offers training in Web site development, Internet use, and radio broadcasting. Its Internet-based information service and network promote electronic resource sharing and literacy among women. Effective strategies like these recognize that, for women’s voices to be raised for peacebuilding, media technology must be designed for audiences at varying levels.

Melinda Quintos de Jesus of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility in the Philippines observed that women’s NGOs have only begun to explore the use of media and its technology in the Philippines. Quintos de Jesus asserted that "NGOs are not alive to their own news" and must strive to develop special skills to position themselves effectively. She noted that when communities are marginalized, their ability to use media and its technology is often ineffective, preventing the development of a political base. Additionally, we observed that the hegemony of the English language can also create marginalization. Even in the presence of sophisticated media technology and technical expertise, inadequate English language skills may interfere with effectively disseminating information and Internet networking.

While women’s peacebuilding NGOs are making use of media technology, we suggest that much can be learned about using innovative and cutting-edge technologies to further peacebuilding. Witness, a New York City-based program of Lawyers for Human Rights, provides an example of a program that uses media technology in a highly sophisticated way. Witness provides equipment and training to men and women around the world to videotape human rights abuses in their countries that can then be transmitted via the Internet to international human rights organizations. In turn, these groups muster their political power to expose the violence, apply pressure to end the abuses, and bring perpetrators to justice. Another example of cutting-edge work that could be emulated by women’s peacebuilding groups is that of Tamara Gordon, a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) correspondent. Using a technique called Video Diary, Gordon teaches people in their own settings to record what they are experiencing. In South Africa she taught various individuals how to videotape their versions of community-based conflict — for example, the relationships between elders and younger people. After the edited film was viewed by the community, viewers gathered for a focused discussion about conflict resolution. Gordon used a similar strategy, Video Nation, during the recent Kosovo war so that Albanians could film the impact of the presence of NATO troops on their lives. In one example, a maid in a NATO-occupied hotel in Albania filmed the comfortable hotel quarters of NATO officials before recording the conditions of refugees from Kosovo who were living in her small home.

Even though many women’s peacebuilding groups recognize the importance of media technology in furthering their objectives, significant obstacles remain to its effective use. For example, although multiple peacebuilding NGOs have World Wide Web sites, many do not have the necessary personnel to maintain their websites. They may not publicize the existence of the website through conventional media outlets such as radio or billboards, by linking to other sites, or securing a search engine to list their sites. Also, web sites created by interns or volunteers may quickly become obsolete if permanent staff lack skills to update it. Thus the site’s value may be constrained, regardless of how creative or useful it might be. Another impediment to effective use of media technology is that E-mail communication may be too costly, inefficient, or time consuming for women’s peacebuilding groups to prioritize its use.

Important limitations on women’s effective use of media technology includes the inability to set aside enough time out of busy family and work lives to become technologically capable. Also, women may be uncomfortable in communicating in this way; they may lack interest in or fear media technology and consequently not develop the needed skills. Thus, approaches must be developed for easier access to the transmission of E-mail and Internet communication. These approaches might include training centers established for women, shared computer time to reduce costs, training in using media technology to tell stories that promote organizational peacebuilding goals, and assistance for women to develop the know-how and confidence to appropriately and regularly use existing technologies. To this end, woman-friendly educational and service networks must be available—whether these be for training in using cell phones, fax machines, radio, TV and video cameras, E-mail, or Internet websites.

Women’s abilities to use available media technologies to exchange information, advocate, and lobby will be keys to NGOs’ and grassroots organizations’ continued work for social change. Whereas use of more traditional media technologies will continue to be important, women’s peacebuilding NGOs must more centrally include multi-faceted approaches to media technology. Otherwise, the influence of women’s peacebuilding organizations will be limited or even diminished from its current stature because the messages of other organizations will compete for people’s attention, activism, and money.

References

Acknowledgments

We wish to express our appreciation to the many individuals and organizations throughout the world who provided help and encouragement as we conducted our research. Without their willingness to share information via the Internet and welcome us during site visits, this research would not have been possible. We thank the International Federation of University Women for awarding us the IFUW Peace Fellowship for 1999. We also are grateful for funding provided by the University of Wyoming School of Nursing, College of Health Sciences, and Office of International Programs that enabled us to expand the scope of this study. Thanks to Michael Young and Daniel J. Isaak for their careful review of the manuscript. Claire Hitchcock, of the University of Wyoming School of Nursing is responsible for the report design, and we thank her for her creativity and generosity of spirit in working with our project. Joan Ryan of the School of Nursing deserves special thanks for supporting our work through her careful fiscal management.

About the Authors

Susan R. McKay, Ph.D., is Professor of Nursing, Women’s and International Studies at the University of Wyoming and a psychologist in private practice. Dyan E. Mazurana, Ph.D., is a faculty member in Women’s Studies and International Studies at the University of Wyoming. Together, their research, publications, and courses focus on women, war, peacebuilding, women’s health, and human rights. Recent publications they have co-authored include Women and Peacebuilding published by the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development: Montreal, Quebec (1999) and two book chapters, "Women, Girls, and Structural Violence" and "Women as Peacebuilders" in the edited volume Peace, Conflict and Violence: Peace Psychology and Social Justice Perspectives to be published by Prentice-Hall in November 2000.

The authors can be contacted at:
Women’s Studies
P.O. 4297
University of Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming 82071
USA
McKay@UWyo.Edu
Mazurana@UWyo.Edu

		Project funded by the 1998/1999 IFUW-JAUW International Peace Studies Fellowship