HCPB MEMBERS BLOG
Leveraging media and communication to engage young people in Kakuma refugee camp
By Dr Valentina Baú Kakuma refugee camp is located in Turkana county, Northwestern region of Kenya. Established in 1992, it is home to approximately 200,000 refugees and asylum seekers from countries including Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Other nationalities include Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. A number of humanitarian agencies operate in the camp under the coordination of UNHCR. Despite the many challenges of life in Kakuma, the camp has an...
10 things you (possibly) don’t know about Peace Builders
By Iyad Kallas, Independent Syrian-French consultant, researcher and learning facilitator, specialized in strategic impact-driven communication and social entrepreneurship. More at www.ikallas.com Life has been generous to me with many A-HA moments that led me to learn first-hand about the different meanings of peace, vis-à-vis the ugly faces of conflict, polarization and antipathy. I have lived these moments in war-torn countries and refugee camps, in the large conference rooms of...
The Great Lakes sub-region: the role of use in the implementation of the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda
By Jean Claude Muhungusa INTRODUCTION The history of the Great Lakes region of Africa has been marked by decades of conflict of various kinds due to the legacy of colonialism, illicit exploitation of natural resources, nationality and identity crisis, ethnic tensions, discrimination, lack of rule of law, political exclusion, poor governance, unemployment, poverty, etc. Narratives and research on the region tend to focus more on images of division, insecurity and precariousness than on the...
The new role of the radio within post-conflict contexts: Assisting in the rebuilding of a destroyed civil society
By Jean-Claude Kayumba (University of Sheffield) Paint by Cheri-Cherin for Radio Okapi’s expatriates leaving staff (2007) Radio plays a significant role in trying to reconcile a divided society, empowering its citizens for a better future. While in some parts of the world the role of radio is not what it used to be, radio is still high in demand in other parts of the globe (Jacob, 2017). Despite being the oldest form of broadcasting, and despite the emergence of new types of media, radio with...
Songwriting and Peacebuilding
By Jesse Matas We do not have many soliders but the sunlight shimmers on each face - words sung at the ten-year anniversary of the Baltic Singing Revolution (Šmidchens, 2014) When I think of a story like that of the Baltic Singing Revolution, a non-violent revolution fully realized by people singing songs (which achieved its goals of political independence and establishing diplomatic ties with the Russian Federation) one of the first questions I have is: where did these songs come from? It can...