MEDIA PRACTITIONERS GAIN KNOWLEDGE ON CONFLICT PREVENTION AND STRATEGIES

Over 26 media men and women have been trained by Women in Alternative Action (W.A.A) Cameroon, on the role of the media in peace building and conflict, ethical and responsible reporting, which will ensure peace and safety.
The training that took place at the Catholic Women Immaculate Conception Home Finance junction, on May 6th 2021, aimed at equipping media personnel, with skills on humanitarian reporting which will go a long way to build peace in the region.

According to the facilitator of the day Madam Rosaline Obah, a journalist's pen has so much power and whatever is reported, will either go a long way to incite hate, violence or build a peaceful society. Therefore, the duties and responsibility of a journalist, is to report fairly, report the background of the conflict and its causes, present the human side of the story and also report on peace efforts being made and not only dwell on the negative angle.
Afterwards, the facilitator walked the participants on the role of the media in effective and democratic conflict prevention where participants were involved in group activities. This activity saw journalist write out headlines that are peace oriented and those which will incite conflict situations.
The facilitator who doubles an the National Coordinator for the Cameroon Community Media Network,(CCMN) Rosaline Obah, says the session was all about ensuring that journalists uphold and strengthen their role in conflict de-escalation and peace building which will go a long way to ensure a free and democratic society whereby, each and everyone found in any community, has a voice and free space to express his/her own view points regarding peace building processes. "One thing I must say is that community persons may have their own ideas to go about peace building, and they may have different initiatives on the ground. But without the help of the media such initiatives may just end within the corridors of their different areas of jurisdiction and one thing I also should stress on is the fact that the media has different platforms that can be exploited for peace efforts and for conflict de-escalation.That is the reason why we were here today to ensure that media persons uphold and re-enforce their capacity so that they can be able to play front-line roles in ensuring that peace actors and experts journey together with media persons to encourage and foster peace efforts within their communities"

Some Participants believes the information and inculcated in them at the workshop will shape and enhance their work. Mauris Taghen of Rainbow Radio Mbengwi notes that, such knowledge will help him change his way of going about programs.
“I have been impacted in terms of identifying conflict and reporting on them adequately in a fair and balanced manner in such a way that we do not inflame the conflict. I think the overall objective has been attained and thanks to the highly qualified facilitator I am going back equipped as a media person to organize new programs to re-angle and reshape them in order to get my audience adequately educated, entertained and informed”
To this student journalist Suh Lizette of UBa Voice Radio, the mindset she came with has been changed “I have learnt a lot especially with the headline so I really appreciate the efforts of the organizers for putting in pace a workshop like this so this is really an opportunity for us to reschedule our minds, review our works as journalists and to improve on them to bring about peace in our society”.
When asked the reason for having this session with the journalist, the Executive Director of WAA Cameroon Madam Justine Kwachu Kumche says;
“We see the journalist as those who have the power to influence positive change within the community and within the context of crisis like this one hap inpening in the North West and South West regions, we think that with the knowledge that the journalist have gathered here, they will go back to be able to impact the communities, to promote peace within our communities to promote transformative change because that is what we all need and the journalists from the different outlets are the best people to carry out this message”.

WAA Cameroon is an NGO founded in 2004 that enables effective Human Right promotion and protection. It also targets conflict affected communities and more especially women, girls, youth and ethnic minorities.
By Tantan Patience in Bamenda
Great job, slowly but surely we shall get there
ReplyDelete