In the spring of 1999, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) commissioned the Canadian NGO, IMPACS to write a discussion paper exploring media development as a peacebuilding instrument. As an addendum to this work, IMPACS published a first draft of an operational framework on media and peacebuilding. Both the strategy and the draft operational framework were the first known efforts in developing a policy strategy for media and peacebuilding.
Initial research demonstrated gaps in the understanding of scope, content and lessons learned of activities in the field of media and peacebuilding. It pointed to the need to further develop tools by which media and peacebuilding interventions are understood and assessed.
The Canadian initiative was brought to the attention of the European Centre for Conflict Prevention. Its executive director Paul van Tongeren started a discussion with Shauna Sylvester, executive director of IMPACS, about expanding the project to Europe. IMPACS, the ECCP as well as a third partner, the European Centre for Common Ground, decided to collaborate in developing and testing the draft operational framework on several cases worldwide, as collaboration in this relatively new field was considered to be essential.
This Canadian/European collaboration allowed for a wide disseminating of the project's findings. The European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation (the ECCP is the secretariat of the Platform) is able to distribute information on the importance and potential of media and peacebuilding activities. The European Centre for Common Ground (with its sister organisation Search for Common Ground, USA) has on-the-ground experience with using media to work for peace for many years and in different countries. This book is the result of the efforts of all three organisations and several people working in these organisations.
Dr. George Terzis from the European Centre for Common Ground and Dr. Myria Vassiliadou, director Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies did most of the background research, the selection of the cases and the writing of first draft texts. George Terzis also visited three of the projects. Eran Freankel wrote the case study on Macedonia.
Lisa Shochat, Phil Bob Hellmich and Allen Scheid of Search for Common Ground wrote the chapter on Evaluation. Jim Wake, an American freelance research journalist based in the Netherlands, did most of the editing work on the case studies and successfully mastered the complex issues on lessons learned and best practices for chapter 1.3. Niall Martin was responsible for the English copy-editing, and Karel Meijer signed for the layout. We have greatly enjoyed working with all of them.
This book would not have been possible without the great efforts of the student assistants of the ECCP, Eric Boesenkool and Peter Oehmen, who did a great job in compiling the directory. A special word of thanks goes to Wouter Dol for his invaluable assistance in the finalising of the book.
Sandra Melone, director of European Centre for Common Ground and Laura Davis, deputy director, were very instrumental in different stages on this book project.
This publication could not have been produced without the generous support of the Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We greatly appreciated this support.
We are also indebted to the many organisations whose work has been described in the case studies in this book and in the profiles in part III. We thank everybody for sharing their experiences with us.
As editors we see this publication as a work in progress. It is our hope that it will provide a solid start to filling in the gap in our understanding, documentation, and policy analysis of media and peacebuilding interventions.
The editors
About the editors