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From Never Again

Never Again is a global network of individuals coming together across boundaries to provoke ideas and action for peace. We aim to encourage independent, critical thinking and connectivity between people by creating peacebuiding projects together. Since its inception, Never Again has sought to connect grassroots activism with high political and business decision making in a variety of ways. Our work increasingly falls across five themes: peacebuilding; education; communication; prosperity and peace; institutions and individuals. In each theme we are ask how we can reinvent day to day business, political and social practice with stronger senses of responsibility for conflict prevention and peacebuilding. We re-imagine a world where humanity is a political priority; meanwhile, we encourage global citizenship through globally connected action. Our network has taken off most rapidly in the Great Lakes Region and now a concentration of our members are highly active in Never Again clubs in schools, universities and among graduates across Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC; while we continue to develop our network across the globe. At the end of last year, Never Again established a Peacebuilding centre in Kigali, Rwanda. Hubs are also growing in New York, LA, Miami, Winnipeg, London, Stoke on Trent and Beijing. We have recent interest from groups in Liberia and Palestine. We have facilitated meetings attended by the youth of the Great Lakes region and the President of the World Bank; we gathered prominent intellectuals, policymakers and activists from Europe, the US and Rwanda in London for the 10th anniversary of the genocide and drafted a submission for the UN Millennium Review Summit on the Responsibility to Protect proposals during seminars held in Kigali. We are inventing a long term, global and evolving approach to conflict prevention through our Peacebuilding House in Kigali, and a global network of individuals and with the help of experts and advisors. Rather than trying to replicate the work of existing campaigning organisations, think tanks or other lobbying NGOs, Never Again has operated as a network of well-placed and committed individuals who are now, and will increasingly be, in positions to advance the aims of the network through their full-time roles in politics, the media, academia, education and business, from New York to Beijing, from Goma to Bujumbura.

Never Again Media

Responsibility to Report

“We ask her to summarise the foreign policy of the Blair years. "Anti-poverty, pro-development. I could say anti-conflict. We must never have another Rwanda." So what should happen in Darfur, where women are being raped and slaughtered as the world watches? "We are trying to force them [the Khartoum government] into compliance. If they won't, we will have to look at . . . whatever package the international community will agree to." This is "most likely to be sanctions". But a UN force to keep the peace is already mandated. Will those soldiers intervene to stop the killing? "No, I can't see that," she says. "There is no mandate for a force to fight its way in. It's a horrendous situation; there is no doubt of that. [Darfur] is where the biggest loss of life is occurring, or likely to occur."” Margaret Beckett interviewed in the New Statesman 18/12/2006

In 2005, a change came that campaigners hoped would help prevent another Rwanda: the UN General Assembly accepted a new doctrine: Responsibility to Protect (R2P). World leaders pledged that the international community, acting through the Security Council "was prepared to take collective action" in a timely and decisive manner" when states are "manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

R2P is a new tool in a new era of collective responsibility and global politics. However, there has so far been little thought on the significance of this change for journalists.

For journalists, R2P means that Darfur is now a domestic news story as well as an international one. The media has a new role in holding UN member state governments accountable to their commitment of Responsibility to Protect. Will the lines between the Home Desk and the Foreign Desks become more blurred as Home Affairs editors are as involved in commissioning reporters to interview the foreign secretary and the prime minister on their responses to Darfur?

Connecting reporters in conflict zones with international media and press “While working as an international reporter, I did my best to warn the international community about the genocide which was looming over Rwanda since 1990. Fellow journalists did not believe me, in particular the editors of the news agency I was working for, because maybe they thought that being a Tutsi I was partisan and my stories were treated as garbage. Maybe I could have triggered a different reaction if I had been Hutu and the whole world would have paid heed to what was going on in my country at that time, if some members of the international community were not accompliced to the same policies which led to the genocide. To comment a bit about the issues mentioned earlier, they may sound relevant to some people here but the true fact is that the terrible tragedy which befell Rwanda ten years ago was not enough to uproot those cliches and fellow genocide survivors would have preferred to be given the opportunity to tell our ordeals and tribulations in our own manner.” Jean Baptiste Kayagamba, Rwandan reporter at the Rwanda Forum: 10th anniversary commemoration of the genocide, Imperial War Museum

Darfur in the news has barely moved beyond reports of rape, armed militias, burnt villages, refugees and resolutions. Fatigue is not with the ongoing situation, but because the reporting does not move: the same type of pictures; repeated reports of changing decisions of a UN force without context of the possibilities for solutions and the international legal framework or targeted interviewing of people with responsibility; and a lack of detail and nuance in understanding and explaining the causes of the conflict. To encourage understanding and to better tell the story as it unfolds from a variety of perspectives; Never Again proposes that media organizations make connections and build professional relationships with Sudanese journalists who may provide them with content, or advise UK based reporters on background and developments in Sudan.

Citizen Journalism 'Citizen journalists' can draw attention to a greater understanding of the causes and possible solutions of the conflict in Darfur using their own websites and social networking tools. E-lists - the Never Again media list has members from a variety of countries who have discussed Darfur and media coverage of genocide (subscribe by sending an email to: neveragain_media@yahoogroups.com E-groups with a wide membership are a good way of getting different perspectives on issues that might be in the mainstream media

Blogs - Never Again has a blog which members can post to at http://neveragaininternational.blogspot.com This has been used to post perspectives, points of view about Darfur and reports from the ground. It is part of the 'Bloggers for Darfur' group of websites at http://bloggersfordarfur.blogspot.com/

For information email: poppy@neveragaininternational.org or clare@neveragaininternational.org