Workshop
Details
On the 27 and 28th February, KAS Kenya in cooperation with the Civil Peace Service (CPS) organized a training with 22 community radio stations on conflict sensitive reporting in Nairobi.The workshop focused on empowering the community radio stations to enable them to be actively engaged in conflict sensitive reporting through the use of non-violent communication especially ahead of the 2017 elections in the pursuit of sustainable peace and development in Kenya. It primarily concerned itself with enabling journalists to gain a better conflict understanding, analysis skills and to enhance their level of awareness as actors in conflict management and alternative dispute resolution.
However, many community radio journalists still lack formal education in journalism and training in particular in conflict sensitive reporting, which might be a challenge in this year’s upcoming general elections. There is therefore need to focus on the priority issues in the communities based on lessons learnt from the 2007 post -election violence and on the increasing role of community radio during elections.
Community radio stations being established and sustained by non-profit entities, are free and independent from commercial and state control other than those of the communities that they serve. KAS acknowledges that community radio is therefore a good platform of social change in the entrenchment of peace building and conflict resolution in the counties and nationally because among the poor, radio listenership is cheap and dominant, and has been enhanced by many radio receivers in rural homes and public transport as well as on mobile phones.
Through interactive sessions and a lot of group work the workshop achieved the following three intended outcomes namely; an enhanced awareness of community radio journalists and local stakeholders in conflict sensitive reporting, conflict understanding and analyzing, non-violent-communication and alternative dispute resolutions among the participating 22 radio stations.
The sessions highlighted the underlying principle of peace journalism where the journalists were reminded that in all reporting, there is a choice between the ethics of intervening and the question on what effect the intervention is likely to have on the prospect of peace. The next question that a journalist should ask himself however is what he or she is going to do about it? In the light of this, KAS and its partner organization KCOMNET in cooperation with the Civil Peace Service (CPS) Programme of GIZ, are planning to organize a convention on that topic in May 2017, targeting over 40 community radio stations countrywide.
