Reporting on the ‘hidden stories’ of Colombia’s armed conflict

In the complexity of Colombia’s conflicts both within and across its borders, IMS is seeking to promote a conflict sensitive approach to journalism and to strengthen local media

If 2008 was a year in which Colombia experienced one of the most difficult diplomatic crises in its history with its neighbours Ecuador and Venezuela, 2010 brought a new opportunity for dialogue and rebuilding relations, basically due to the inauguration of Juan Manuel Santos as the President of Colombia.

Now a little more than a year later and almost halfway through President Santos’ mandate, Colombia has come to a crossroads. In the aftermath of Colombia’s local elections on 31 October 2011, key questions about security, corruption and democratic principles have bubbled back to the surface.

However, the border problems between Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador typically remain practically invisible to the communications media and to public opinion. Comprehensive coverage of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees is paltry at best. Reporting on urban and rural security, the new dynamics of criminality and the mafias that peaked with the elections, is now sure to once again slide down the national agenda pole.

While the media in the nation’s capital, Bogota, together with a handful of other urban centres manage to side-step the effects of this toxic surge for territorial control; the provincial towns that border Ecuador in the South and Venezuela in the North remain under heavy attack.

The border problems are a reality that the media in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela have difficulty in systematically following up and reporting on. There are clear gaps in terms of their knowledge of the complexities, trends and how to report on them.

Strengthening local media for a peaceful development

In this context, IMS has spent the last year building up a 3-year proposal to strengthen the role of the local communications media in the border zones and of the national media in the search for peace and democratic development in Colombia and with its neighbours. There are three strategic lines of action:

• Strengthening local and community media in the border zones
• Providing visibility for trans-border problems
• Public policies associated with the media sector and the exercise of journalism

“Every week we have new threats”

“The majority of journalists limit themselves to covering daily news stories, to reproducing press releases, that create less risks,” explains a reporter from the programme Reporteros de Colombia who was forced into exile due to the reports she filed.

“But those of us who dare to go further, to investigate the causes or those who are responsible, we find ourselves exposed, targets of attacks and threats. Being a journalist in Colombia is not easy. Every week we have one or two scandals, and every week we have new threats.”

“It’s also true that much of this depends on where the journalist is. If you’re in the capital and you work in a large media organization, there’s less risk and you’re better protected.  However, if you’re in a small city or a remote population, you’re vulnerable, an easy target for threats or attacks because you’re in the same place as the criminals you’re reporting on.”

In November last year, in just such an area, CINEP carried out its first workshop in the city of Cucuta on the border between Colombia and Venezuela on “Journalistic Mechanisms for access to the ‘hidden agenda’ on the issues of land and victims of the conflict”.

“These two themes are major issues in the border regions as many people are forced through violence to abandon their lands and flee to Venezuela; the issue of restitution for these people, especially their lands, is crucial,” explains Caleb Harris, the Media, Violence and Peace project coordinator at CINEP.

Lowering tensions in the border regions

CINEP believes that training on rigorous investigative journalistic methods to highlight the needs and stories of victims and the difficulties of redressing the injustices that have been done, is a crucial way to ‘lower tensions in the border regions’. IMS will support this approach through its global experience around Conflict Sensitive Journalism in border countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

One of these major tensions is that Venezuela has to deal with an in-flow of Colombian refugees; another is that many of them don’t want to return because they have nothing to return to, because up until now the laws governing restitution of lands that were seized by armed actors, have been inadequate or non-existent. There is a new legal framework now with the current President Juan Manuel Santos, but a key task of journalists in the provinces will be uncovering anomalies and gaps in this legal framework in terms of its execution on the ground.

Conflict sensitive journalism can play a pivotal role in in such a complex cocktail mix of inter-related issues. The IMS border project aims to promote this type of work and thus enable the media to contribute towards a reduction of the violence, the promotion of a culture of peace and the search for alternatives for a political solution to the Colombian internal armed conflict.

Between 2001 and 2009, over 200 independent journalists working across seven cities and their surroundings – Medellín, Cali, Barrancabermeja, Pasto, Valledupar, Bogota and Barranquilla – were supported by an editorial team in Bogota to produce investigative reports that could bring hidden stories to light. All three will work with IMS on developing the border project.

For more information on IMS’ Colombia Borders programme, feel free to download a more detailed description of the project, available in English and Spanish. For more information on IMS’ approach to working with journalism in conflict, see our manuals on Conflict Sensitive Journalism, available in Spanish and English. Also available in Spanish is an IMS media assessment from the area from earlier in 2011.