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Information: playing a role in fostering peace and civil society


 is emerging from a terrible war:
 200,000 killed, two million dis-
 placed people, thousands of peo-
ple who had their arms hacked off as an intimi-
dation gesture: is it possible to express one's
opinion with a mere free and democratic ballot
after emerging from such appalling violence?
A few months ago the women in these photos
lived in Kabala, a town not far from the border
with Guinea. Kabala was the theatre of 17 bat-
tles during the 10-year conflict. Two of these
women are running in the municipal elec-
tions. They are being interviewed by Millicent
Massaquoi, a journalist with Fondation
Hirondelle, an institution that banked on the
pacifying and civil society-building potential
of information.


SPECIAL ISSUE 2 N.E. DECEMBER 2008


This report was broadcast in a programme
produced jointly by Fondation Hirondelle
and Fourah Bay College, in Freetown (Sierra
Leone), the oldest university in West Africa.
An original idea and a resounding success: six
hours of news bulletins, political debates and
programmes on society's issues broadcast live
by the university's radio station and also by
the UN radio and a dozen community partner
stations.
For Fondation Hirondelle it includes a key
element: accurate, credible, independent infor-
mation meeting the huge needs of this popula-
tion to see an end to lies, propaganda, rumours
and manipulation. An information that encour-
ages a political debate, that forces untouchable
leaders to come down from their pedestal, that
makes them answerable to simple citizens of


their decisions, management and, frequently,
of their abuse of power.
Also, debates on society's problems so as to
hand over the right to speak to ordinary men
and women, to let them take part in the public
dialogue, to allow women to demand peace to
enable them to take care of their children, to
let the young say they're longing for a future
free of poverty. And also to expose both minor
violations and daily scandals such as power
shortages in operating blocks owing to the
authorities' sloppiness, soldiers holding driv-
ers to ransom at roadblocks, or rubbish piling
up in the village centre.
Fondation Hirondelle speaks in the languages
of its listeners, which nowadays is rarely French
or English only. In neighboring Liberia,
STAR Radio broadcasts in 16 languages; in the