Geneva, 12 May 2010 WSIS Forum 2010 High Level Panel on ICTs and Disaster Response
I welcome the invitation from the ITU to take part in this debate. AMARC, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, is an international grassroots association which brings together a network of around 4000 community radios worldwide in 117 countries.
Over the years community broadcasters in numerous countries and all regions of the world have faced the challenge of responding to disaster, indeed they have often been among the first responders in communities that have been affected. I am going to share some of the lessons we have learned about the role of communications in disaster response.
We are meeting just a few months after the devastating earthquake in Haiti. It is unfortunate my friend and fellow Board member of AMARC, Sony Esteus is not here. Ironically he is stuck in Miami because the volcanic ash from Iceland has affected flights through Madrid. He would have spoken from first hand experience of when the earthquake struck. Sony is Director of Haiti’s leading community media support organization, SAKS – Society for the Animation of Social Communication. Their building in Port-au-Prince was totally destroyed. Sony was in his office at the time and lucky to have escaped a live. For a week he had almost no means of communication with the outside world – mobile phone and internet systems were down or barely functioning, power supplies destroyed, and people pre-occupied with searching for family and friends and assuring basic supplies.
The earthquake in Haiti brought again to the fore not only the importance of communication when disaster strikes, but also the challenges when the impact of disaster includes destruction of communications infrastructure.
Community radio has been present in Haiti for more than 15 years and has experience in responding to previous emergencies such as floods and hurricanes, but nothing at this scale. Many media organisations suffered damage - radio studios and transmissions towers were destroyed, others were unable to broadcast because of damage to buildings, the risk of aftershocks causing further damage, or staff being too busy engaged directly in search and rescue. AMARC organised an emergency response mission to assess the impact on Haiti’s community radio sector and to provide support to community media activists. In the immediate aftermath we found that most of the community radio stations had been remarkably resilient and although several had suffered damage and had diminished their programme output, they had continued to broadcast, aware of the vital importance of doing so for their communities. Some had even increased their programme hours to meet the evident demand.
Most had made significant changes to their programming – assisting to mobilize community response, providing information on missing persons, publicizing requests for information, explaining the causes of the disaster and the risk of aftershocks, advising on precautions to take, signposting to welfare and supplies, providing psychological support and so on.
What is notable in the response of community broadcasters to disaster is that they can be a focal point for local organization, receiving as well as imparting information, working with local community leaders, facilitating dialogue and assisting people to understand and come to terms with what has happened. They should not be considered simply as a relay for information from public agencies, but also as a means by which those directly affected by disaster can engage in disaster response.
This is particularly important in remote and rural communities. In Haiti, for example, much of the immediate international response focused, inevitably, on the capital and other urban centres of population with the greatest concentrations of people affected. Essential services were much slower to reach smaller and more isolated communities which were consequently reliant on self help in the for much of the emergency phase.
Community broadcasters have learned lessons from other disasters and other parts of the world. Two years ago AMARC undertook a survey of community radio practice in natural disaster management.. The survey brought together the experience of community broadcasters in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan and Nepal, among others. The stations surveyed reported responding to floods, floods, landslides, earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions. Programming responses included information about post-disaster risks and mitigation, missing persons, logistics distribution, trauma healing, and facilitating community dialogue. Many of the stations surveyed explained their role in organizing community-level meetings and assisting to mobilize local response.
The survey also sought to obtain views on how emergency response could be strengthened. Strategies included preparing a disaster response manual, maintaining a back-up power generator, having a building resistant to disaster, and training of staff to deal with disaster response. Access to mobile phones and internet were considered important but also the means to produce and distribute printed materials, such as posters and leaflets.
In the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase, the participatory and interactive nature of community media takes on further importance. Affected communities need the means to speak out and have their concerns heard. They need to be consulted about the reconstruction process and engaged in its implementation. Public authorities and international agencies need to demonstrate transparency including by being accountable through the media. Psychological recovery can be assisted by carrying the testimonies of those affected, engaging expert advice and facilitating dialogue. Special attention needs to be given to vulnerable groups – women, children, the elderly and the disabled.
Finally let me suggest that it can be useful to frame the communication needs of disaster affected communities in terms of communication rights. Traditional approaches to disaster response have tended to treat those affected as passive victims which can lead to a double disaster – first the natural disaster and then the displacement of local economies and social relations with the disaster industry. A rights-based approach starts from the recognition that the people most affected by disaster are also the most important agents of recovery. Their communications rights – of voice and expression of opinion, of access to information, of transparency and accountability of public agencies and of the means of dialogue with and within the community – are also the means by which other rights - to food, water, shelter, health, economic opportunities etc – can be asserted and defended. Community media provide one of the tools by which the communication rights of disaster affected communities can be assured.