ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace)

It’s been an bloody eventful year, literally and metaphorically.

Sri Lanka’s war escalated dramatically over the course of the year, with the LTTE suffering significantly at the hand of a Government hell-bent on its complete destruction. The timbre of democracy in Sri Lanka took many blows, not just through the erosion of human rights and the exacerbation of humanitarian crises in the embattled North and East of Sri Lanka, but also through the continuing unconstitutional rule of the present regime. Demonstrating a racism and rabid intolerance mirroring that of the LTTE, the regime in the South displayed a totalitarian bent that in living memory was the worst it has been for democratic governance in Government controlled areas in Sri Lanka.

Work on ICT4Peace was placed against this sombre backdrop. Clearly, though we established significant markers in ICT4Peace writ large, the continuing violence, anxiety, insecurity and war means that there is very little to celebrate. I am convinced however, as never before, that ICTs can make an impact in a number of ways despite the rise of violence.

Human Rights Monitoring, Reporting and Advocacy

Key in this regard is a Human Rights Monitoring, Reporting and Advocacy platform for two leading human rights NGOs in Sri Lanka that InfoShare designed and developing using HURIDOCS. When I first met a representative of HURIDOCS in Geneva in 2007 and told him about the system, his first response was how we had managed to create a world-class system without even one single questions asked of them. Clearly, they were impressed.

Strategically, the system came at a useful time for the two organisations currently actively using it (in addition to other HR consortia interested in using it for their work in SL). The Sri Lankan government’s placement of extremely sharp and loquacious experts of spin and counter-propaganda to man its key High Commissions (Switzerland) and diplomatic fronts (SCOPP) posed a severe challenge to even leading HR advocacy groups in Sri Lanka. These organisations were good at international lobbying and HR advocacy, but unused to collecting, recording, storing and disseminating HR violation in a systematic manner, which meant that what they produced and released in the public domain was mercilessly decimated by the Government spin doctors as partial, inaccurate and untrue.

Moving away from the collection of records from, in some cases, Microsoft Word and Excel, into the highly structured and comprehensive HURIDOCS standard was more of a organisational challenge than technical, as is always the case with most ICTs introduced to the NGO sector to augment their work. Adequate training had to be given and human resources considerably strengthened in order to use the system, which over the coming years we hope will set a local and international standard for strong HR monitoring and advocacy.

Our human rights system features:

• Web based interface: The world’s first fully web based Human Rights monitoring and reporting system. The database will run on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, ensuring the highest accessibility and a system highly resilient to changes and upgrades in operating systems.
• Admin interface: This consists of a full implementation of the internationally recognised HURIDOCS data gathering/interpretation system with a full-featured data management interface with which organisations can enter, edit and manage human rights information.
• Public advocacy website: This is equipped with charts, GIS maps and reports for data analysis as well as functionality to manage publications, articles and news related to human rights issues.
• Multiple user access levels that define whether a user can view public information, view confidential information, modify information or site settings. This enables organisations to give selective access to the data management interface to individuals and partners that they may wish to bring into future monitoring work. Further, this enables any partner anywhere in Sri Lanka or abroad enter data directly into the system that organisations can then verify and approve for publication.
• UNICODE standards based data entry: For person names and place names, the system includes extra fields to enter the same names in Sinhala and/or Tamil. Unicode text is used to make these fields searchable.
• Data export formats: currently exports to CSV, an industry cross-platform standard that enables users to view information on Excel or any other spreadsheet programme on any operating system
• RSS feeds of all new and updated content that enables critical updates of human rights to be accessed via email, SMS, mobile phone, PDA or newsreaders
• Automated periodic (day end/weekly/monthly) situation reports, available on the website as an archive and also available as an RSS feed.
• Database backup: the data on the server will be automatically backed up daily.
• Security: SSL will secure all data being transmitted between the user’s computer and the server.
• Browser compliance: all features are supported on Mozilla Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 2, and Internet Explorer 7.
• Over the wire and on-disk industry grade encryption and data security.

Fully complaint and backwards compatible with HURIDOC’s own (ageing) WinEvSys, our system is several generations ahead of it. We have planned an exciting range of features, from full mobile and PDA integration to advanced data visualisation including GIS that we will progressively build on to the system. I worked closely on the design and development of this system and am looking forward to its evolution.

Citizen journalism and New Media - Groundviews

Groundviews, launched in November 2006, came to be recognised over the course of 2007 as a site for original and path-breaking content on Sri Lanka. The site went on to win the first international award any civil society web based initiative / site has won in Sri Lanka - an award of excellence in new communications conferred by the Society for New Communications Research.

The content featured on the site over 2007 has responded to key events and processes in Sri Lanka with content that, on occasion, would not have been published in traditional media. Ground reports from the embattled North and East were useful foils to critically appreciate traditional media reports and propaganda on the war. Leading news and information websites such as TamilCanadian News, InfoLanka, Colombopage, Global Voices Online and numerous other blogs and websites, both local and international, now regularly link to the site.

Over the course of the year, Groundviews took on the malpractices of traditional media, web censorship, compelling perspectives of life in the midst of conflict, legal and political analyses, articles that critically analysed disaster response mechanisms and frameworks, issues such as the case of Rizana in Saudi Arabia that were largely ignored, at the time, in traditional media and on a number of occasions had to deal with the challenges posed by trolls and other miscreants.

In addition to this, Groundviews digitised and uploaded as well as archived and featured progressive videos on war and peace in Sri Lanka and fully incorporated Facebook into the website (to my knowledge, the first citizen journalism initaitive in the world to begin a Facebook Fan Page as an extension of the main site).

As of today, Groundviews on average gets around 20,000 pages views a month and around 700 page views a day (click here for more stats on the website and its readership).

Citizen journalism and New Media - Vikalpa, Vikalpa YouTube Channel and VOR Radio

Vikalpa was launched in 2007 to address the need for citizen journalism content in Sinhala and Tamil that critiqued the status quo. Even though Groundviews was and still is a place for tri-lingual content, much of the submissions came to me in English and I didn’t have the time to actively elicit and / or create content in the vernacular from the field.

With ICTA and UNESCO funding, Vikalpa started to generate content from the field on issues related to Groundviews but with an emphasis on the vernacular.

Vikalpa, which is run and edited by a team of two at CPA that I helped train in citizen journalism basics, has developed its own identity. Wholly based on UNICODE standards, that to date poses some problems with input of Sinhala to the site, Vikalpa nevertheless generates around 600 pageviews a day, which is incredible given what I thought (wrongly) would be the more limited audience of web users interested in alternative news and information in the vernacular (Sinhala / Tamil).

Vikalpa is the first and to date only CJ website in Sri Lanka that produces content in Sinhala and Tamil, including audio and video.

To this end, though not yet officially launched, the Vikalpa YouTube Channel was a pathbreaking exercise. Exclusively using the Nokia N93i (as an experiment to challenge ourselves to take mobile phone based news gathering to the limit) the channel was in the 3rd week of December ranked in the top 100 list of Directors on YouTube (ranked #82) for a video we uploaded that featured perspectives of the embattled city of Jaffna in Sinhala, that alone was viewed over 4,000 times. The channel itself has been viewed over 1,300 times since we created it, with many videos featured in it viewed hundreds of times.

Again, I was proved wrong on just how much of an audience there is for CJ content critically analysing war and peace in Sinhala and Tamil.

Voices of Reconciliation Radio (VOR Radio, Sri Lanka’s first and only civil society podcast website, was strengthened in 2007 over a hundred hours of programming, largely in Sinhala and Tamil, of content that explored social, political, economic, cultural and religious issues across all communities, ethnicities in Sri Lanka, including many voices and podcasts from communities in the East and North of Sri Lanka.

Notable in this regard was full selection of recordings from the first Women’s Tribunal in Sri Lanka on 25th November 2007, that includes deeply moving and compelling personal narratives of violence against women (click here and select November 2007 from the drop down list to get a list of all the podcasts).

Work with the ICT4Peace Foundation: ICT4Peace internationally

In my capacity as Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland, I was part of several interesting meetings over the course of the year culminating in the launch of the ICT4Peace: An International Process for Conflict Management at the United Nations in New York on 15th November 2007.

I penned a brief write-up of this event for the PeaceIT! magazine put out by the Crisis Management Initiative. A full list of documents on this process, including the report of the event, can be found on the ICT4Peace Foundation’s website here.

In addition to this, I also made a submission on behalf of the Foundation at the United Nations OCHA +5 Symposium held in Geneva in October 2007.

The Foundation also launched in 2007 the web’s first wiki that catalogues real world examples and applied research of ICT4Peace.

Publications and writing on ICT4Peace, New Media and Citizen Journalism

I wrote far more in 2007 to web and traditional media, as well as chapters to books, than I did in 2006. Most of my writing, that can be found on this blog, Groundviews as well as on my personal blog, were written as personal responses to and critiques on the situation in Sri Lanka.

Of my writing on ICT4Peace per se, the most notable submissions were:

• Who’s afraid of citizen journalists? - Chapter from “Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book”
• Television for peacebuilding: An impossible dream? - Chapter from Media & Peace in South Asia, published by South Asian Policy Analysts Network and edited by Imtiaz Alam, South Asian Studies, Volume XII
• Citizen Journalism and humanitarian aid: Bane or boon? (unpublished book chapter)
• Citizens + Media: Amplifying voices for peace through citizen journalism (speech for grassroots civil society activists in Sri Lanka on the potential of new media, CJ and ICTs in general to strengthen their work)
• Citizen Journalism and Peacebuilding: Is there a connection? (published on Madrid11’s website)
• Input into ICT for Disaster Management e-primer, authored by Chanuka Wattegama and published by APDIP
• SMS alerts during emergencies - Lessons from Sri Lanka’s tsuanmi alert on 13 September 2007
• Critique of Guidelines for Relations between US Armed Forces and Non-Governmental Humanitarian Organisations in Hostile or Potentially Hostile Environments published by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

Other significant developments and writing related to ICT4Peace, New Media and Citizen Journalism

• For the first time, leading traditional / mainstream media organsiations in Sri Lanka recognised blogs and bloggers as journalists, who were to be afforded the same status and protection of other print and electronic journalists.
• Dialog Telekom, a leading ISP and mobile telecommunications provider in Sri Lanka, based in part of my critique of their marketing, were forced to change their spiel with regards to the availability of WiMax based broadband in areas they has ostensibly “covered”.
• One of my most read posts this year was one in which, using the experience of a bomb that killed 30 that went off close to my residence, I pointed out the trappings of using SMSs to communicate in emergencies.
• Key strategic input into a range of initiatives to strengthen civil society advocacy, collaboration and interoperability through InfoShare, more details of which are available here. This included editing media training manuals under Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Programme for augmenting the IT capacity of journalists in Sri Lanka.
• The first and only monitoring exercise of the timeliness and accuracy of SMS news alerts in Sri Lanka.
• Participation in and critical thoughts on the Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Forum held in Liverpool, England in April 2007. This included two presentations on Online Dispute Resolution and Second Life and Online Dispute Resolution: Where to now?

So what?

I’m often asked what all this means. My response is simple. As noted at the beginning of the post, despite the increase in violence domestically, Groundviews, Vikalpa and VOR Radio in particular, but also the burgeoning Sri Lankan blogosphere in general offer a range of rich and varied perspectives on democracy, peace and war in Sri Lanka.

Some of the voices for example featured on VOR Radio are now no longer with us. The perspectives on Groundviews have engendered discussions and greater awareness on issues that traditional media has only managed to cover through stereotypes. Vikalpa has exposed little known facts of life even in Colombo, such as the existence of high security zones within the University of Colombo.

As I note in my article on citizens journalism on Madrid11:

There is no guarantee that Groundviews will foster a new social movement in support of peace. There is no guarantee it will secure peace, in any greater degree, on the ground and in the north and east of Sri Lanka, where it is needed most. There is no guarantee that hate speech will not take over the timbre of online debate. The more Groundviews is successful in fostering new voices in support of peace, the more it will become a target of concerted attacks to prevent its growth.

And it is here that our greatest challenge lies. Not in the technology itself, but in the creation of a social and political movement - one fostered by citizen journalism mediated through new media and new technology - that is able to maintain, in some small way, the hope of a just and lasting peace in Sri Lanka.

This hope fuels Groundviews, not as a simplistic magic bullet against terrorism, but as an increasingly important vehicle for ordinary citizens to record their views in support of democracy as the only way through which terrorism can be effectively combated.

Challenges

One of the greatest challenges I’ve had to deal with this year has been in responding to the significant challenge of trolls and hate speech online. Two spikes of hate speech and trolling on Groundviews - one for around 2 to 3 months in early 2007 and the other, ongoing at the time I write this and after our award, suggest that with every expansion of the sites to new audiences brings with it a share of new trolls and anonymous commentators who seek to use the fora to promote their own blinkered viewpoints that they parade as patriotic. This despite clearly stated guidelines for submissions and the tone of manner of discussion.

Editing and deleting these comments invariably brings the argument by those who have little tolerance for its otherwise (see comments in response to this post), that the sites flagrantly violate the freedom of expression.

Some of the trolls started their own blog posts to name and shame the sites and one other, most recently (and hilariously, I think) started his own blog for posts and comments rejected from Groundviews.

On the one hand, this demonstrates the high visibility and veracity our citizen journalism sites command locally and internationally, in English as well as in the vernacular. A comment or post on any of the CJ sites we’ve created is guaranteed more visibility than a personal blog. This is its own attraction for those trolls.

On the other, I’ve often had to make judgement calls, based on the guidelines and also on what I feel a particular post or comment may engender in subsequent comments and submissions. All of the posts on Groundviews deal with highly emotive and divisive issues, more so in light of the widening, violent disconnect between pro-democracy NGOs (and the public writings of those working in or associated with them) and the larger polity and society in the Sinhala South (and their counterparts amongst the diaspora, who often tend to be more rabid, intolerant and insufferable).

It’s been tremendously challenging to edit Groundviews in particular (and the other sites less frequently) because I’ve had to continuously weigh personal threats to self and family that come in the form of comments and emails against the need to keep the forums as open as possible to content that may rile the pseudo-nationalists and patriots, but are viewpoints that need to be features precisely because they are being erased apace in traditional and other media in Sri Lanka.

The most challenging comments however are those that may be overwhelmingly spiteful, but carry an essence of truth in them that if only the person could articulate sans the viciousness, would be genuinely useful to further debate. Interestingly, efforts to communicate with those who communicate in such a manner have on occasion proved fruitful. One case is with someone called Justmal, who made some rabid comments earlier in the year against me personally and others published on Groundviews, but over time, has demonstrated a marked ability to engage intelligently with the content therein.

On balance, I think that moderated fora work better than unmoderated discussion spaces. The lessons from Moju were well learnt in this regard, even though the challenge of moderating is quite honestly extremely draining with little that comes in the way of thanks save for the content I’ve engendered that serves as a vital record and archive of discussions for posterity.

Final thoughts

ICT4Peace, a field that since 2003 I’ve worked hard to define through applied research and practice, came of age in 2007. Through the work of the ICT4Peace Foundation at the international policy level and my own, more humble efforts in Sri Lanka within violent conflict, I think the acronym and what is means and stands for is now part and parcel of the debates on conflict resolution, Online Dispute Resolution, SSTR, civilian-military relations, crisis management and humanitarian aid.

I’m looking forward to 2008 to consolidate this appreciation of ICT4Peace.

My earlier post on the workshop on Virtual Diplomacy at GKP seems to have touched a raw nerve with, strangely yet tellingly, the folks from Diplo Foundation who moderated and organised the session far more than some of those in the panel itself.

Clearly, the prissy and defensive responses that are found in response to my post, which are markedly different from those I received (via email) from Joshua Fouts and Rita King from Dancing Ink Productions who were actually represented on the panel, reveal a desire to obfuscate facts surrounding the constitution and organisation of what I will maintain was not just the worst workshop I attended at GKP, but one of the worst I have attended in my life on ICTs and their application to augment real world processes such as public diplomacy.

A few salient points are worth noting. Diplo Foundation states that,

“The background on SL for the audience was available at the beginning of the session (the description for the GKP-publication was provided two months before the event). In order to properly address the audience, the session was moderated to provide basic information on Second Life and the list of main, mainly development-related, aspects of SL.”

Several questions arise in this regard. It would be fascinating to discover how the organisers were able to fathom the constitution and interests of the audience before the workshop in order to tailor the content of workshop for them. I certainly didn’t get any revised material before or after the workshop and neither did my Sri Lankan colleague who accompanied me to the worhsop. There was none at the entrance, none on the chairs, none circulated in print or electronic by the GKP secretariat or by the Diplo Foundation. Participants came to the sessions based on and with their GKP brochure, which irrespective of when it was printed, outlined what was to be the terrain covered by the workshop. That it was changed was only too painfully evident as time progressed. It was only upon visiting the Diplo Foundation’s site after I returned to Sri Lanka that I discovered how much the panel’s scope had dramatically changed from that which GKP’s brochure had us believe. “Properly addressing” the audience therefore would have been to first inform them of the changed agenda and scope of the discussions.

As I noted in my first post however, it wasn’t even the fact that the scope changed that was the issue, but that the panel’s submissions were most disappointing for those with significant experience in SL for public diplomacy and who expectations of this workshop was to learn more than what they already knew. The Diplo Foundation deliberately confuses basic with naive in this regard and my original post covers a range of issues that the panel did not even hint at.

Diplo Foundation’s monotonous refrain in its comment, that “This was not the theme of the session; see the above mentioned descriptions of the session” in reference to the points I bring up, ergo, has perhaps more to do with the dastardly organisation of the workshop, for which the GKP secretariat perhaps must take the greater share of blame.

Clearly however, better communication from and between GKP and the organisers of the workshop (given their penchant for spamming participant Inboxes) would have helped orient audience expectations better and alerted those of us like myself, with significant real world experience in the use of augmented and virtual reality, to stay away.

Diplo Foundation goes on to note, correctly, that the question I posed in my post on whether the Maldivian Embassy in SL would continue to exist if activists launched protests in it against the essential dictatorship of the Gayoom regime, was not asked in the workshop itself.

Mea culpa.

What I did point to in the session was the fact that governments and other institutions may initially take kindly to and look at with great interest the possibility of establishing a presence in virtual worlds without realising the potential for them to be embarrassed by avatars staging demonstrations against them. Elections in France and acts of virtual vandalism in Australia demonstrate what’s already been done in Second Life in this regard. Going further, my point at the workshop was that initial enthusiasm may in some cases give way to increasing levels of resistance to virtual worlds in light of the above.I fleshed out this submission further in an email I sent to the moderator of the workshop, Jovan Kubalija from Diplo Foundation, after my return to SL. I averred, inter alia, that

I enjoyed the panel on SL, but may I humbly submit that I thought some of what was proposed by the panel to be naive and a result of a limited experience with complex political emergencies (CPEs) and protracted ethno-political and intra-state conflict (which defines many regions in the world today).I have worked over 8 years in peace process design and ICT and my optimism is tempered to a large degree by the fact that I live and work in a country where, when I step out of my home, I don’t really know whether I will make it back home alive. There are worse situations and the challenge also is to get, for example, the SL Maldivian Embassy to welcome and regularly conduct open forums that challenge what is in South Asia the longest running dictatorship and a regime with an atrocious record of freedom of expression and assembly.

Jovan’s response was,

I agree that the personal experience is very important for grasping broader political concepts. it is especially important for understanding tacit, emotional and “non-recordable” aspects of conflicts. Unfortunately, like yourself, I and most of Diplo team have experienced “reality” of the conflict in the Balkans.

Eva Chan Tanner (who I assume is also from the Diplo Foundation, given the curmudgeonly tone) also makes some comments on my post.

The prospect of using the virtual environment to build communities, to promote actual constructive dialogue and, hopefully to lessen the social and physical barriers that so often overshadow any real efforts diplomatically and in our daily lives was what was actually said.

I agree - that’s precisely the problem. The potential for progressive communications and dialogue is there and is one I unequivocally recognise and support. The real potential for its anti-thesis - of the creation and / or exacerbation of real world differences through virtual environments, of which examples are many including outright murder - and the panel’s inability and unwillingness to address it, was where the central problem lay.

Eva goes on to note that “There was no place in this session to politicise or promote a cause”. Though from the tone and content of her submission and the one earlier I find it hard to imagine Diplo Foundation furthering significantly any political cause, the raison d’etre of public diplomacy is precisely that. To ignore (party) politics or shaft it aside as unnecessary and unimportant is what I referred to in my original post as the dangerously naive outlook of some in the panel.

Eva then avers that,

“More importantly, the session showed how different governments are using it as part of their way of reaching out to the world. Isn’t this better than nothing at all?”

This is, most politely put, a pedestrian argument. Doing something is not necessarily better than doing nothing. Certainly, the swank Swedish Embassy with streaming Swedish pop would be a cool place to hang out to find out more about a country many of us born to conflict wish we were citizens of. But the mere presence of Government’s on Second Life does not mean they are “reaching out” and does not mean they want any real participation that critiques official policies or questions their propaganda. A presence in SL may just simply mean that they see it as another way to promote their (parochial) interests through a different medium and in no way can it be assumed that a two-way, meaningful dialogue is engendered and sustained by the virtual creations and presence of real world governments and States in Second Life.

Another point is made in the defense of the panel’s submissions on Second Life’s low carbon footprint, which in my post I said was not a given. In an earlier post on Second Life and the environment I noted that,

If it means that in some way it’s use cuts down on carbon emissions through the reduction of air-travel, then I guess it’s all the more reason to promote it as a platform for serious work and collaboration.

The point however is that the jury’s out on the real benefits of using SL to save the environment, as Nicholas Carr’s post here fleshes out in some detail. The panel was unaware of this debate and simplistically said that using SL was more sustainable than real world interactions.

Sadly yet in a manner that colours our appreciation of her entire submission, Eva ends her comment on a rather juvenile note by saying that

“I highly recommend that you revisit your notes from the session. Perhaps for the next GKP event, it would be wise to submit a proposal to do a session on ‘the use of Blogs, the beauty of it and the beast within it’.”

Condescension is the last refuge of those unable to countenance anyone who challenges their established wisdom. Obstinately protecting the halo around their noses, the ivory towers that Eva and the rest of her ilk reside and revel in are too far removed from reality to acknowledge the significant work of those who, based on what was presented at this workshop, are a few years ahead of the Diplo Foundation in their use, understanding of and approach to virtual worlds and new media to facilitate and augment public diplomacy, understood by this author as dialogues, physical and virtual, in support of the reconciliation of difference, the transformation of violence and the celebration of diversity.

ICT for Disaster Management, written by Chanuka Wattegama, follows the excellent tradition of e-primers published by the Asia Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP). In sum, as with all e-primers, this is an extremely useful publication for the non-expert to grasp the potential of and challenges to the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in the prevention, mitigation and preparedness of disasters.

Though Chanuka kindly acknowledges my input into this publication, I can’t remember telling him anything significant that he hadn’t already thought of or covered in the draft that I went through.

I was very pleased to meet up with Chanuka in Malaysia recently during GKP’s GK III conference, where I picked up the final version of the publication. A few points came to mind as I read through this book.

• Chanuka correctly notes that ICTs for disaster warning involve a concert of devices, mechanisms and technologies to alert communities at risk. In mentioning Television (pg. 9) as one such medium, Chanuka fails to mention that their use and effectiveness is almost entirely dependent on electricity. Should there be no electricity or if the grid is brought down by the disaster itself, TV’s are rendered utterly useless.

• On pg. 11, Chanuka mentions the potential of SMS and states that “…SMS works on a different band and can be sent or received even when phone lines are congested. SMS also has another advantage over voice calls in that one message can be sent to a group simultaneously.” While technically accurate and in some cases a proven way to alert others of a disaster / crisis, it seems to be the case that SMSs are also significant affected by network congestion, as was quite clearly brought out in my own experience in attempting to use SMS in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

• On the same page, Chanuka brings out the potential of cell broadcasts for disaster warning. Sri Lanka’s tsunami alert on 13th September 2007 brought this into sharp focus with many SMSs sent and received, but little or no use of cell broadcasts to target messages geo-specifically to vulnerable communites. SMS news alerts during emergencies - The experience of JNW and the tsunami warning of 13th September 2007 is a very interesting article and subsequent discussion, including Prof. Rohan Samarajiva from Lirneasia, that explores this further.

• On pg. 15, Chanuka mentions that “There are no well-known case studies where community radio has been successfully used for disaster warning purposes.” Emphasis mine. There seems to be a large corpus of literature that presents the proven potential of community radio in early warning but apparently little or no case studies and lessons identified from instances where thy were actually used for disaster warning. (also see point on importance of community radio in long-term disaster recovery efforts below)

• Box 3 on pg. 20 mentions Reuters AlertNet but fails to, perhaps because the site was launched just before or after the e-primer was published, Preventionweb, a new initiative by UN/ISDR that is still in the process of being developed aimed to increasing knowledge sharing on disaster risk reduction (DRR) issues, for both the general public – including media and teachers – and DRR specialists.

Also important to record in this context is Alertnet’s own evolution this year (2007) to more fully embrace User Generated Content (USG) such as blogs and web 2.0 features such as easy linking of stories to social networking sites and issue, region, country, search query specific RSS feeds. Further, in 2007, Alertnet launched an interactive global map with information on conflict, food security, sudden disasters and health crises.

• Chanuka uses the Sahana Disaster Management System as his first case study in the section of ICT for Disaster Response. I’m a fan and staunch advocate of Sahana, but feel that much of the debate on ICTs for disaster response within conflict zones or regions facing complex political emergencies (such as the North-East coast of Sri Lanka) simply fail to take into account the complex and highly flammable ethno-political, cultural, communal and conflict dynamics. I have brought this out specifically in the case of Sahana and more generally in Complex Political Emergencies and humanitarian aid systems design.

• In the same section, Chanuka brings out in Example 2 how Sahana helped in coordinating donor action. In this regard, I have often wondered what became of the Donor Assistance Database (DAD), a system that was created and implemented under the now defunct TAFREN to help to better coordinate and monitor post tsunami recovery aid, with the support and funding of the UNDP. It’s been offline for well over a year now - no indication of what happened, how it was used, how effective it was, how much money went into its development as a matter of public record and why it is inaccessible today (a mirror site gives a glimpse of what it looked like).

• Box 5, dealing with blogs and tsunami response, could have been expanded with examples from a multitude of other case studies and sources that clearly demonstrate, as Chanuka rightly points out, the effectiveness of USG and new media such as blogs as an alternative communications medium. For more information in this regard, please read Who’s afraid of citizen journalists?, a chapter I wrote for Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book published by the UNDP and TVEAP.

• The section on ICT for Disaster Recovery could have mentioned the impact of community radio in long-term relief and recovery efforts. Many case studies can be found in this regard, for example, the manner in which Internews supported community radio stations in Indonesia and the path-breaking productions of Real Voices Radio with tsunami affected communities and regions in Sri Lanka, again by Internews.

• On pg. 29, Chanuka points to Groove Virtual Office, a programme that InfoShare used extensively for peace and negotiations support operations within the framework of the OneText initiative and also in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. A detailed critique of the pros and cons of the programme, based on our exhaustive field use with multiple actors including local and international relief agencies and political actors after the tsunami can be found here (see pgs. 14 - 20 in particular)

• On pg. 33, Chanuka points to the low ICT penetration in the Asia-Pacific region and goes to say that “With such low penetration levels, it is extremely difficult to establish any effective ICT-based disaster warning system.” Strangely, this observation runs counter to the work presented by Lirneasia (where Chanuka works) on Making Communities Disaster Resilient at the GKP GK III conference. The emphasis at this presentation was on how a range of ICT mechanisms and tools, coupled with disaster preparedness and response plans drawn up by communities, could help even if the majority of those in communities did not have access to ICTs.

Finally, those interested in Chanuka’s publication may also wish to read After the Deluge : InfoShare’s Response to the Tsunami. This document explores in detail the use of a range of ICTs in the tsunami relief effort that I and InfoShare used in Sri Lanka and addresses the need to create sustainable and culturally sensitive technology / ICT frameworks and mechanisms for long-term relief work and disaster recovery.

Chanuka’s publication is one I can highly recommend for anyone looking for a quick and comprehensive overview on the potential of ICTs for Disaster Management and it’s availability as an APDIP Wikibook makes it easy to update this publication with new developments in research and practice.

A statement by the five leading media organisations and journalist trade unions in Sri Lanka carried in the Daily Mirror today is the first expression in the history of journalism in Sri Lanka that bloggers are defined as being inextricably part of the media community.

In reply to the Media Minister’s statement five media organisations comprising the Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association, the Federation of Media Employees’ Trade Unions, the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Federation, the Sri Lanka Tamil Journalists’ Association and the Free Media Movement said: “According to the views of a democratic society all those in print and electronic media as well as those who are professionally engaged in collecting information and distributing it to the public are considered journalists. Even those who maintain political and social blogs are considered journalists.”

The statement was issued in response to the Sri Lankan Media Minister’s denial of the contents of a report by the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) that ranked Sri Lanka as the third most dangerous place in the world for journalists.

A related article by Free Media Movement (FMM) spokesperson Sunanda Deshapriya (in Sinhala) explores this issue further, where he notes that:

“ïn saying that the only journalists the Minister recognises are those with ID cards issued by the Media Ministry, the Government of Sri Lanka conveniently ignores the vital social and political critques of bloggers in Sri Lanka. From Myanmar to China to Iraq, the world today gets news and information through bloggers.”

But it is not just the Government in Sri Lanka that does not understand the emergent power of bloggers. The behaviour of some traditional media in Sri Lanka towards bloggers earlier this year, and one Editor’s incredible response to this author’s efforts to point out the traditional media’s responsibility to treat bloggers in the same manner as other media sources, demonstrate that blogs clearly pose an irksome challenge to old school journalists as much as repressive governments.

I attended Diplomacy Goes Virtual: Opportunities and Limitation of Virtual Diplomacy, a worshop at the recently held Global Knowledge Partnership GK III conference in the hope that I would learn more than I knew and had already done using tools, mechanisms and platforms such as blogs, Skype, mobile communications, the XO laptop and Second Life, to further inter-cultural understanding, reconciliation and peacebuilding.

I was very, very wrong.

The panel was, by far, not just the worst I attended at GK III, it was one of the worst and most ill-informed I have ever attended in my life.

Perhaps it was on account of the gross mismatch between what the audience expected from reading the description of the workshop in the official GK III brochure (as reflected here) and what the panel turned out to be, which as noted here concentrated exclusively on Second Life.

I could have even endured a discussion on Second Life if it was anchored in the socio-political and cultural dynamics of countries and regions outside of North America and Western Europe - for example, those with repressive regimes that clamp down on fundamental freedoms, or those that were embroiled in Complex Political Emergencies (CPEs) and protracted ethno-political conflict.It was not to be.

The panel, that did not have a single Asian on it or anyone with experience in using MMORPG’s / virtual worlds / Second Life for real world complex political negotiations, focussed entirely on the simplistic uses of Second Life to bring people together for genetic research and other mundane and relatively uncomplicated tasks. The unique and extremely challenging demands of virtual diplomacy shaped by and responding to violent conflict or where not at all covered.

The panel repeatedly pointed to the existence of Embassies of countries such as the Maldives in Second Life as proof of the coming of age of virtual diplomacy. My challenge to the panel was to map out how long the Maldivian Embassy on Second Life would last if there was a concerted effort to demonstrate against the essential dictatorship of the Gayoom regime in its virtual space.

It was a question they could not answer.

Even with Second Life, they did not cover at all the potential of conflict within sims, real world conflict spilling over into virtual interactions (or vice versa), alternative dispute resolution mechanisms within Second Life (such as the E-Justice Centre in Second Life), evolving notions of justice and peace within Second Life, how media reporting within and on Second Life influence the manner in which avatars interact or how sims in Second Life could be used for future scenario model based simulations in support of conflict transformation processes.

Further, the panel did not address the challenges posed by new media, such as blogs, to diplomacy and diplomats, as brought out in my post Diplomacy and blogs (on Jan Pronk’s behaviour in Sudan) or critical discussions on how the United States State Department is now using blogs to further international relations.

The panel also scoffed at the environmental impact of using Second Life, even though there’s no agreement that using Second Life is as environmentally friendly as it is often made out to be.

In fact, the panel did not address even a single point on the potential and challenges of using Second Life for dispute resolution, collaboration and civic participation I had made earlier at the 5th International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution in Liverpool, England.

On the positive side, the panel did discuss the urgent need for and developments towards interoperability of virtual worlds and the need for open standards and open source based access to and development of various sims and MMORPG’s. A representative of Linden Labs who connected virtually made the exciting announcement that Second Life would be connected to (and perhaps even accessible from) mobile devices.

Regrettably, the constitution of and terrain covered by this workshop was the anti-thesis of what was expected from a global knowledge exchange as envisioned by GK III. Not only was the knowledge imparted through this workshop US and Western Europe centric, dated, passe and extremely blinkered, it was also at at times, dangerously naive.

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy said Will Durant, the American writer and historian. In light of the overwhelming insignificance of this workshop’s presentations, one can compliment them all on mastering half the art of diplomacy.

I sincerely wish however that GKP invites, the next time around, non-diplomats who would invariably make for more meaningful and interesting discussions!

UPDATED: Please read Critique of “Virtual Diplomacy” workshop at GKP touches a raw nerve

The latest issue of Peace IT!, a journal for conflict and crisis management professionals published by the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) is out and can be downloaded here. The journal explores how ICTs can be used effectively to prevent, manage and resolve crisis to the benefit of peace and security.

This issue features an article on ICT4Peace I wrote in my capacity as Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation on the launch of ICT4Peace: An International Process for Conflict Management at the United Nations, New York, on 15th November 2007.

The issue also contains an excellent essay by Chamindra de Silva on Humanitarian FOSS, a field of research and practice that he and his team, responsible for Sahana, have helped define globally.

Related articles and posts

On ICT4Peace launch at the UN in New York: 

• Launch of ICT4Peace process at United Nations, New York - A Concept Note
• ICT4Peace: “Strategic use of ICT for Crisis Management” - High-Level Working Lunch, 15th November 2007
• Statement of Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland at ICT4Peace launch, United Nations, New York

On Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response using ICT

• Innovation in humanitarian aid - Herein lies the future

On Humanitarian FOSS:

• Emergency response information systems: emerging trends and technologies: Open source software for disaster management
• Open Source Disaster Recovery: Case Studies of networked collaboration
• Community based, community driven disaster and humanitarian response
• Real world example of short message driven relief work and needs assessments

“Communicating disasters — before, during and after they happen — is fraught with many challenges. Today’s ICT tools enable us to be smart and strategic in gathering and disseminating information. But there is no silver bullet that can fix everything. We must never forget how even high tech (and high cost) solutions can fail at critical moments. We can, however, contain these risks by addressing the cultural, sociological and human dimensions - aspects that this book explores in some depth and detail, from the perspective of both media professionals and disaster managers.”

Sir Arthur C Clarke, in his foreword to Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book

I was invited to contribute a chapter on citizen journalism and disaster response for Communicating Disasters: As Asia Pacific Resource Book published by the UNDP and TVEAP in December 2007.I am glad I agreed - the final book is one of the best I’ve read on media and communications for disaster preparedness and response, with contributions from leading authors that are personal, provocative, challenge conventional wisdom and offer vital insights into the role and practice of journalism and media in covering and responding to disasters and other crises.In my own essay, I introduce the idea of “victim journalism”, who by “palm-grown” content enabled by the increasing footprint of and access to ICTs, have more agency to secure their needs in the aftermath of a disaster or crisis. On the other hand, I also point to significant challenges of citizen journalism:

like any other tool, [citizen journalism] can [be] used for purposes they were not in-tended for, misused or only used for personal gain. There is no guarantee that images and photos from disasters produced by victims in the thick of it will galvanise attention and support.

However, I go on to note that:

Disasters are about resilience - how we pick ourselves up after a human tragedy and slowly return to normalcy. ICTs help us understand how we can help communities spring back to life after a disaster. They humanise a tragedy, the scale of which may be too large to otherwise comprehend. Citizen journalists, flawed as they may be as individuals, are nevertheless tremendously powerful as a group. They have the potential to capture, over the long term, a multiplicity of rich and insightful perspectives on disasters not often covered by the traditional media.

A note of thanks to Nalaka Gunawardene, a co-editor of the publication, who in response to an early draft said that since my chapter named and shamed countries, including Sri Lanka, for their deplorable human rights and media freedom record (that I submit vitiates the potential of citizen journalism) it may not pass muster with the hyper-sensitivities of the UNDP, that funded the publication.

I was happy to note that the final publication was unchanged from my draft.

Read my chapter in full here and visit the TVEAP site for updates on when the entire book will be published online under a Creative Commons License.
Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book160 pages; 17.3 cm x 24.4 cm; 19 chapters + 7 appendicesPublished: December 2007

Tamilnet, blocked by the Government and all major commercial ISPs in Sri Lanka earlier this year, is now accessible through SLT’s ADSL (Broadband) connections (last checked 19th December 2007, 6:30PM local time).

The website was the first in Sri Lanka to be blocked, with the Government openly stating that it was searching for hackers to bring it down. Article XIX’s statement on the ban clearly pointed to the negative fallout of what was a ill-informed decision:

ARTICLE 19 views this move as a clear breach of the right to freedom of expression. We are particularly concerned that this may signal a move by the government to add Internet censorship to its already considerable control over the media. We also note that attempting to curtail access to alternative views can only perpetuate the conflict and undermine efforts at conflict resolution.

Though the site was accessible through web proxy and other means, the decision to unblock it seems as arbitrary as the decision to close off access to it in the first place.

France24’s beta initiative called The Observers follows in the vein of CNN’s iReport to give prominence to and ostensibly strengthen the station’s own reporting perspectives from citizen journalism content around the world.

Though there’s nothing on Sri Lanka at the moment, the content already on the site examines alternative and interesting perspectives on the recent Algerian bombing, Human Rights violations in Egypt and Russia’s recent “elections”.

One problem of the website as it stands is that videos / content on it are a mix of streaming Windows Media, Quicktime and Flash. Getting all videos to the Flash platform would be useful for device and platform independence. My other chief problem is that the content is only in English, which I suppose one cannot get away from given that France24 caters to an audience that’s primarily English speaking. CJ content however is produced more and more in non-English languages and as initiatives like Sri Lanka’s Vikalpa YouTube channel (disclosure - I am part of the initiative) and The Human Rights Hub by Witness demonstrate, there’s compelling and damning content from citizens available that seriously questions the bona fides of government’s and others in power.

What is interesting and encouraging to note is the emphasis France24 places on verifiable CJ content. One of the arguments most commonly against CJ is that it is parochial and even more blinkered than traditional electronic / print media and that by extension, one needs to be more skeptical of this content than what’s produced and broadcast by the likes of France24, BBC and CNN. While it’s an argument that has some merit, it’s often the case that CJ produces content by witnesses present at incidents and prcesses journalists simply aren’t or don’t have access to. Sifting the really good content from the junk is a daunting task and one that I hope France24 succeeds in. Read more about how they intend to do this here.

With more and more CJ content making it to traditional and web based mainstream media websites, we can expect that in 5 - 10 years, CJ as we know and identify it today will be seamlessly part of media reporting. Traditional / trained journalists will play the role they always have - to present multiple truths in an impartial, accurate and responsible manner. I would argue that trained journalists will have to be even more careful in how they select and present the news and that the real test in the future is actually an old challenge - to be skeptical, but not equally so, of processes and events on the ground and how they are seen, interpreted and reported.

The Internet and its impact on (France24’s) journalism is an interesting video that delves more deeply in The Observers initiative.

What the entire site and the videos above DON’T address are France’s own restrictions on CJ content. Clearly, the challenges to bearing witness are to be found much closer to home than in Iran or China!

The idea that the mobile web consists exclusively of mobile devices running web-browsers identical to the web experience we are used to with IE/Firefox is simply wrong. Throwing more and more resources towards creating devices for the developing world that can emulate the PC browsing experience is misguided. The 2 billion phones being used in the developing world are really great at making and receiving voice calls and text messages: Why not shape the internet experience to meet the specs of every phone’s inherent functionality (voice!) rather than requiring devices to have specs that quite frankly aren’t going to be realistic for many years to come?

A thought provoking article by Nathan Eagle on MobileActive explores the limitations and potential of mobile phones in the developing world.