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Sowing the seeds of change | K. Leigh Robinson, Head of the Public Information Office

Comedian and UNMIL Peace Messenger, George Tamba (right), celebrated throughout Liberia as Boutini, performs in an AIDS awareness campaign. Photo: UNMIL | 22 Jun 11

Just after the Security Council passed resolution 1509 to establish UNMIL on 19 September 2003, a small team of international public information specialists was deployed to Liberia to support and promote the peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives of the new Mission.

Monrovia introduced them to the landscape of destruction they’d been watching unfold in the preceding years. But little could fully prepare them for the post-war realities on the ground: of families torn apart and displaced; utilities and communication lines destroyed; food and water in short supply; education and health systems in disarray. Broken dreams, lost hopes and lawlessness were rife; civility seemed to have been abandoned.

With much of the international community watching to see how the UN might repair the country, the team adopted crisis communication strategies to address challenges of how to assist the Liberians in having faith in the new focus on peace and stability for their country.

Combatting misinformation

In 2003, few means of communication had survived the destruction not only of infrastructure but also of social cohesion. The population had no access to credible news and information and knew little about the Mission descending on them.

Power brokers of the time had abused public communication channels, seeking to manipulate or control the media through threats or financial means. Their goal was to deliver one-sided propaganda that would ultimately sway the public to adopting their personal or factional agendas, while denying access to accurate information. Former President and war lord Charles Taylor had withdrawn short-wave frequencies of privately owned and community radio stations, further restricting access to information for those living in rural and/or remote Liberia and opening the way for the manipulation of information to an already uninformed population.

Liberians desperately needed trusted channels of communications and a platform for discourse in order to move forward. The immediate and dire need for an interactive communications strategy would be paramount for the Mission to gain their trust, as well as to improve the UN’s situational awareness on the ground. Employing diverse types of media, the public information team sought to gain the local population’s consent to the Mission by issuing regular reports on developments, promoting dialogue and combatting misinformation.

From the first days of its deployment, UNMIL would use its radio station as the instrument of conflict resolution most capable of rapidly reaching all corners of Liberia. Radio had proven useful to the UN to inform and engage large segments of the population in, for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo—far larger than Liberia--, but it had also been used as a weapon to manipulate beliefs to catastrophic effect in Rwanda in 1994.

The UN public information team set up rapidly: on 1 October 2003, broadcasting from a van parked in a field outside Monrovia the now familiar line: “UNMIL Radio, the official voice of the United Nations Mission in Liberia,” was transmitted. Those first words heralded a new era of hope for Liberia.

The station’s popularity grew quickly: its 24/7 transmissions soon became the primary source of frank and impartial news and information for people all over Liberia and along the borders with Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire.

Groups of men, women and children would gather under the canopy of mango trees or inside thatched Palava huts to listen to the radio’s news and education programmes as well as music sometimes from a hand-held solar powered radio, winding it frequently to prolong its battery life and their listening time.

Fifteen years on, the radio station that was established as a result of the Accra peace accord with the help of the Economic Community of West African States ends its existence as UNMIL Radio, to be reborn as ECOWAS Radio on 1 April 2018.

Delivering messages to the grassroots for critical campaigns

At the same time, those first public information officers saw the value of personal outreach particularly in Monrovia where most of the population was concentrated, and in rural hubs. Outreach, in the form of sports and music events, and the contracting of local celebrities was employed at every stage of the Mission’s life. These interactions where large groups of onlookers gathered were critical to the Mission, through demobilization and reintegration, the health crisis of Ebola, three rounds of elections and the handover of security to the Liberian Government. Popular local icons were employed to deliver messages to promote understanding and interaction between those of opposing affiliations, break down barriers and disempower hostility and tension.

The Mission’s public information office crafted and delivered messages in collaboration with key partners such as the Government of Liberia, stakeholders in the international community, local civil society organizations, local media, celebrity advocates and other national actors. These messages were produced in English, Liberian English and local dialects, conveyed by means of jingles and topical programmes on UNMIL

Radio and by billboards mounted across Liberia, street banners, T-shirts and printed materials created with illustrations by Liberian artist,

Samson Zogbaye.

UNMIL sensitization campaigns also addressed deeply rooted attitudes about vital topics such as the status of women and girls; traditional practices; health and hygiene customs; refugee rights, voting and civic responsibilities.

One of the Mission’s first priorities, the demobilization and reintegration of more than 100,000 ex-combatants showed how strategic communications, or the lack thereof, could affect a critical chapter in the peace process. Launched only four months after the peace agreement was signed, the initial Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programme had not been set up in time to deliver on the expectations of the high number of ex-combatants who showed up expecting large payouts. Misinformation by parties opposed to the plan and insufficient communications with accurate information both to and about the ex-combatants were among the issues that needed to be addressed. The Mission regrouped and a massive public information and sensitization campaign ensued; the Mission restarted its DDR programme in April 2004 and completed it without further  incidents in November of that year.