Untold Stories

Cameroon: Deby's Surprise Visit

Christiane Badgley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:00:27 -0500

Christiane Badgley, for the Pulitzer Center

The President of Chad, Idriss Deby, made a surprise visit to Yaounde on October 28th. As the visit was announced only 24 hours before Deby's arrival, the private press was full of speculation on what urgent matter brought Deby to Cameroon.

Officially, Cameroon's president, Paul Biya and Deby held a short, private meeting to discuss bilateral cooperation and the receding waters of Lake Chad, an item that both countries will bring up at the Copenhagen climate conference. Unofficially, the corruption scandal at the Bank of Central African States, in which a Chadian minister may be implicated, as well as the renegotiation of pipeline contracts, could have been items for discussion.

Banners announcing the visit, Chad and Cameroon's cooperation and efforts in favor of democracy, development and peace, were draped across the boulevards of Yaounde. Roads were blocked for hours before Deby's arrival and traffic was snarled across the city. CRTV, Cameroon's state-run television station, went live with the event all afternoon, reminiscent of the good old days of state television when broadcasting consisted largely of endless presidential speeches.

The visit was both a photo op. and a reminder of how dramatically the pipeline project has increased the importance of the relationship between Chad and Cameroon.

To learn more about this project: http://www.pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=135

Cameroon: Pipeline Dreaming

Christiane Badgley — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:49:27 -0500

Christiane Badgley, for The Pulitzer Center

What happens when a major American oil company comes through two poor African countries with a project to drill for oil in one and transport it across the other?

Dreams. Fantasies. Unrealistic expectations. False hopes. As Samuel Nguiffo, founder of the Center for the Environment and Development in Yaounde told me, "People hear oil, America, dollars, jobs. They hear it's a 25-year project. From there it becomes money and jobs for everyone for 25 years."

I spent the day outside of Yaounde, visiting villages crossed by the pipeline. The pipeline passes about 15 kilometers away from Yaounde, but it's hard to imagine that the nation's capital is so close. Once you leave the paved Yaounde -- Douala artery, the secondary roads are unpaved and in poor shape. There's no piped water and many villages lack functioning wells. Electrical coverage is minimal.

People around here are angry, still. Everyone cites different numbers, but I can say that well over 500 complaints have been filed with COTCO, the Cameroonian Oil Transportation Company (owned mainly by ExxonMobil, COTCO handles the Cameroon side of the project). More than one hundred complaints are unresolved. Beyond the specific grievances, though, there's a general, widespread feeling among people I've met that they were duped.

I met people who told me all sorts of things: The company people said there would be jobs. They said they would fix the road when they finished building the pipeline They told us they would build schools and hospitals. They said they would pay us every year for our damaged crops. They said we would all have excellent TV reception. They told us they would bring in water.

Did the company people really say all that? Probably not, but it appears that there were many misunderstandings and little was done to clarify. Consider the TV reception: ExxonMobil laid fiber optic cable underground next to the pipeline. This was probably one of the best things that came out of this project for the local populations. And it was definitely great PR for the company. But from a fiber optic cable to TV reception, there's a quite a stretch. Did anyone spend time in the villages explaining what a fiber optic cable would do for people with no phones, internet service or nearby cyber cafes? Was it that surprising that someone could end up confusing television reception with a fiber optic cable? Government officials also came through villages promoting the pipeline project; they were not always well informed adding to the misunderstandings in the villages.

When I look at the pipeline easement outside of Yaounde -- a completely banal stretch of land -- I understand the disappointment. People expected something big, something that would change their lives. And, instead, all they got was an underground pipeline. Of course, once constructed, a pipeline, isn't going to create many jobs. It's not going to attract new business. It's not really going to do anything above ground -- but it seems that this information didn't get across.

Certainly it was in the interest of ExxonMobil and the governments of Chad and Cameroon that local populations support the project. Does this mean that there was an intentional effort to deceive people about the risks and the benefits of the project? No, but when working with cultural differences, language differences and people who, for the most part, have little education or experience with industrial projects, misunderstandings are inevitable. Clearly the information campaign that preceded the pipeline's arrival was insufficient.

To learn more about this project: http://www.pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=135

"Did You Say a Circus?"

Pulitzer Center — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:52:00 -0500

Linda Matchan, Photography by Michele McDonald, for the Pulitzer Center

The other day, on a bitterly cold morning in Igloolik, Michele and I suited up in four or five layers and started walking to the airport to meet up with Artcirq, the Arctic circus. They were heading to Iqaluit to rehearse the show they're performing at the February winter Olympics in Vancouver.

As usual, we lost our way. There are no street signs here or well-defined roads, for that matter, and travel seems to be something of a free-for-all, skidoos speeding randomly across the snow. With broad expanses of snow everywhere you turn, it's easy for city-dwelling qallunaat (non-Inuit) to lose their bearings.

Artcirq rehearses for the Olympics

Luckily, people are friendly here so we flagged down a passing skidoo and asked for directions. The driver spoke only Inuktitut but his passenger told us he was going to the airport too, and offered us a ride in his qamutik, a sledge with wooden runners. (These were traditionally used for hauling behind sled dogs, but now they're commonly towed by snowmobiles.) He took off at full throttle, with barely enough time for us to toss our gear on the polar bear skin and throw ourselves on our knees, hanging on for this unexpected white-knuckle taxi ride. At the airport, the English speaker told us he was pretty new in town himself. He introduced himself as a pastor of the community's new Seventh-day Adventist Church (Igloolik's already got Catholic, Anglican and Pentecostal Churches, and someone told him the other day, “there are Mormons around.” The missionaries keep coming … but that's another story.)
He asked what we were doing in Igloolik and I told him about the circus. “Did you say a circus?” he said, dumbfounded.

Throat singers Lois Suluk-Lock, center, and Marie Illungiayok, right, from Arviat, rehearse in Iqaluit for a performance at the Olympics in Vancouver in February. Artcirq performer Jimmy Awa Qamukaq practices, left.

I'd had pretty much the same reaction when I first heard about a circus based in Igloolik, which doesn't even have an ambulance. It was started by Guillaume Saladin, now 36; he'd spent his summers here as a boy with his father, Bernard Saladin, an anthropologist studying Shamanism which was practiced here before Christianity came. Guillaume returned for a summer when he was 24 and reconnected with old friends, helping to launch a program for youth people that combined acting and video. While he was there, two of his old friends committed suicide. “That was a big blast of pain for all of us,” he said.

Returning to Montreal, a chance encounter with a circus performer inspired him to sign up for the National Circus School, and when he graduated, he joined a Quebec-based circus, Cirque Eloize. But his heart was still in Igloolik. Every summer he came back here, this time bringing his circus buddies to run circus workshops and engage the young people who didn't have a lot to keep them busy or a sense that they had much of a productive future. In Guillaume's mind, suicide was a by-product of this sense of hopelessness.

Artcirq, the Arctic Circus, rehearses in an unheated room at Igloolik's ice rink.

Eventually Artcirq was born, a hybrid of a performing arts troupe. Guillaume moved back here permanently four years ago. The number of performers is fluid having to do, in part, with who can attend rehearsals, who's doing well in school, how many of the girls are pregnant. (Igloolik has a high rate of pregnancy among girls and one of the fastest-growing populations in Nunavut.) But there's a distinctly Inuit flavor to it. They do juggling and acrobatics and other expectable circus arts, and also integrate elements of traditional Inuit arts, such as drum-dancing, and throat-singing. Also, traditional Inuit games, many of which were borne out of the challenges of living up North when there are three months of winter darkness and freezing temperatures. A lot of these games, such as one-foot high-kicking, involve extreme agility, endurance and strength, all essential for survival on the land.

Right from the start, Guillaume had big dreams for this circus – to travel the world and celebrate Inuit culture. Many of the performers had never left Nunavut before, but he's doggedly done fund-raising to take them, literally, to Timbuktu, Mexico, Greece, among other places where they've performed and led workshops, often with other indigenous performers. The circus is beloved in Igloolik: In one high school English classroom, we saw a lesson on the board in which the kids suggested “Bad Examples” of behavior and “Good Examples.” Bad ones included “Taking Drugs” and “Silent Wars.” Good ones included: “Inuit games” and “Artcirq.” On the other hand, we also spent time with a large extended family (including the oldest person in Igloolik, a woman who is roughly 105) and as some of the elders sat around and talked, one said through a translator she thought Artcirq's show was too white.

Artcirq performer Terry Uyarak gets a fitting with the only costume Artcirq has - a polar bear skin - during rehearsal in Iqaluit for a performance at the Olympics in Vancouver in February.

Artcirq faces large ongoing challenges. Funding is a constant battle. Their current practice space is a small, low-ceilinged freezing cold room inside Igloolik's hockey arena. The only costume they have is a polar bear skin – the product of a near-death encounter with a bear that nearly knocked over Guillaume's tent on a hunting trip with friends. One 18-year girl in the circus has a small child and is pregnant.

Only six of the members including Guillaume will be going, and they'll be part of a half-hour performance ensemble on Feb. 21 with 14 Northern performers, prior to the awarding of Olympic medals. (Until Wednesday, there was another one more performer, a 14-year-old boy, but he was shipped home because he resourcefully managed to find alcohol in Iqaluit, and got drunk.)

Michele and I returned to Iqaluit and watched them rehearse yesterday. One of the things that struck me was how many outside influences are reflected in their show. There's a lively gig, a legacy of the Scottish whalers. There's a lot that's traditional, of course – the pair of throat-singers, an acrobatic performance of a seal-hunting excursion.

Artcirq members and other Northern performers rehearse for their upcoming performance at the Olympics in Vancouver in February.

And then there are the hiphop performers. Nunavut is very big on hiphop: The Blue Print for Life organization runs “Social Work Through Hiphop,” throughout the North, which uses hiphop with at-risk youth to “empower them with a sense of control and hope in their lives.” Though this may not be what they intended, it also as it happens blends nicely with the Raven Hop and drum dancing.

Halloween – Northern style

Pulitzer Center — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:02:49 -0500

Linda Matchan, Photography by Michele McDonald, for the Pulitzer Center

You couldn't have asked for a better Igloolik Halloween: Bright moonlight, clear horizon, snow on the ground, and a temperature of -38 degrees, factoring in the wind chill. Halloween is a huge deal here – hundreds of kids fanned out on the roads, many of the little ones going door-to-door on the back of their parents' skidoos. We saw dozens of babies in their mothers' amautis, the traditional Inuit parkas designed for carrying babies in hoods. The babies wore costumes too – funny hats, or face paint. If I were to pinpoint this year's predominant costume theme, it would be: homemade and resourceful. The local Co-op store sells some costumes, but supplies are limited and most people can't afford them. So the Inuit improvise, as they do in so many other aspects of life here. (Photographer Michele McDonald went into the Co-op to buy Coke today and an Inuk man who struck up a conversation told her he's found Coke does a great job of cleaning rusty chains.)Painted faces and warm clothing were the trend for Halloween in Igloolik, Nunavut, this year with temperature at about 30 below zero Fahrenheit, with wind chill factored in.

So people use whatever is at hand. We saw a lot of homemade masks, and fringed garbage bags pulled tight over bulky parkas. One boy was wearing a cardboard box that said “Taxi” on the side. Another had pyjamas over his coat. One kid was wearing snowmobile goggles, and a whole family went trick-or-treating as lace curtain panel ghosts. Some went with the Northern motif -- a boy in a caribou coat, lots of kids were in sealskin pants which people wear around here to go hunting. There was a report of a woman wearing a wolf's head. To keep warm, kids carry their open bags or backpacks around their necks in front of them so they don't need to take their hands out of their gloves. One little girl's pink princess dress barely peeked out from beneath her parka, over her heavy snow pants. Joey, a member of the Artcirq troop and a 2009 graduate from Ataguttaaluk High School, takes his daughter and nieces out for Halloween in Igloolik, Nunavut.

Candy is expensive for families to give out here; a bag of a dozen mini-chocolate bars can be $15. So people are resourceful this way, too, giving out popcorn, baked goods, or cereal in ziplock bags. One woman told me a little girl came to her door beaming with pride: “Guess what?” she said. “My parents are giving out candy this year.”

Halloween is a big day for kids in Igloolik, Nunavut, whatever the weather (clear and 30 below zero with wind chill this year) they are out.

A Culture Cries

Pulitzer Center — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:44:00 -0400

Linda Matchan, Photography by Michele McDonald, Pulitzer Center

IGLOOLIK, NUNAVUT– I'm here, near the top of the world, to write about Artcirq, an Inuit circus in the high Arctic region of Canada. It's an unlikely story: It was started by Guillaume Saladin, a circus acrobat from Montreal who'd spent summers here as a boy and wanted to return to help the community. A lot of help was needed. Life is tough here in Igloolik: people are poor and young people – including friends of Guillaume's – were starting to take their own lives.

Against all odds (no money, no equipment) Artcirq has taken off. The Inuit, it turns out, are natural acrobats – flexible, strong, agile, traits cultivated by life in nomadic times. Young people who'd never been on a plane before, were now performing in Africa and Mexico. They've been invited to represent Nunavut at the Winter Olympics next February.

But you can't talk about the circus without telling its back story, and this has to do with suicide. Nunavut's suicide rate is higher than 10 times the national average. But not many Inuit want to talk about it. “I'd be fired,” one Inuk (singular of Inuit) woman told me this week, after backing out of an interview we'd arranged.

A view of Iqaluit, Nunavat's capital, taken Thursday Oct. 29 in late afternoon (3:46 p.m.)

I've only been in Igloolik a few hours, not long enough to know much about it except that it's on a small (2000 people) island directly south of Baffin Island, dark and insanely cold. My fingers froze on the short walk between the airplane and the terminal. (Which begs the question: How are we going to take pictures?) It's also said to be very traditional, rooted in historic Inuit traditions; yet also very innovative. Besides being the home of Artcirq, it's a haven for film and video – home of noted filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk and ISUMA, producers of the feature “Atanarjuat The Fast Runner” which won the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2001; as well as “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.” Igloolik also has a women's film group, Arnait Video Collective, which co-produced the acclaimed feature, “Before Tomorrow.”

But this is my third trip to Arctic Canada where I've visited seven communities, and it isn't hard to see that Nunavut suffers from a mosaic of social ills – poverty, drug abuse and alcoholism, domestic violence, a housing shortage, not enough jobs, a lot of school dropouts, malnutrition, and of course suicide, particularly among young men.

Nunavut was formed in 1999, carved out of the Northwest Territories as the result of a hard-won land settlement agreement. It's a giant land mass with 26 tiny communities spread far away from one another and linked only by airplane or, in the winter, by long difficult treks across the ice via snowmobile. Spend a day in Iqaluit, the territory's capital, and the picture you'll see is not pretty. The nice houses belong to the white people. Men linger in doorways in the cold. A lot of the children are toothless and inevitably you'll see them in the Northmart store buying pop and eating candy: It's horrendously expensive to fly food up here, so they eat what's cheap. (Little known Arctic fact: So much soda is consumed here that Iqaluit has its own Coca-Cola bottling plant.)    Photographer Michele McDonald and I puzzled over a sign we saw on a wall of Inuksuk High School: “Make learning safe.” It means,“ keep teachers and students from being abused,” guidance counsellor Sheila Levy explained. I keep having to remind myself that this is Canada, where I grew up, one of the wealthiest and most progressive nations in the world.

But the high suicide rate, highest among young men aged 15-24, is a particularly tragic aspects of life here and this is suicide season. “October, November, December, are the traditionally bad months,” Nunavut's chief coroner Tim Neily, told us today. “It's hair-raising.”

It's also relatively new,   beginning around the time of the federal government's assimilationist “resettlement” policies of the 1950s and '60s. Canadian authorities coerced the nomadic Inuit into communities, and sent their children away to residential schools where many were physically and sexually abused, and forbidden to speak their native language, Inuktitut.

One woman I spoke to on one trip North – she made me promise not to identify her name or her community – went through her own particular hell. When she was three years old the dreaded coast guard medical control ship, the C.D. Howe arrived in her community.   Its mandate was to to identify tuberculosis patients which hit hard up here in the 1950s and '60s. She was diagnosed with TB and immediately ripped away from her parents. “There was no discussion,” she said.   She was given a metal tag with a number, and that's how she was identified. She spent two years, alone, in a sanatorium in southern Canada; her parents had no clue where she was. (Her sister was on the boat, too, but was sent to a different city.) When she came back, she didn't recognize her parents and had forgotten how to speak Inuktitut.

It's a common story here, with various twists. The theme, though, is that the ripple effects of the resettlement policies are still rippling – hard – in 2009. “We are no longer what we were,” the woman told me. Many young Inuit are neither grounded in the old ways nor able to absorb the new. Some do graduate from high school, some find jobs, some move “south” for work, but a lot of them don't bother going to school – what future do they have here anyway? It's particularly demoralizing for the men, she said. They were accustomed to being the hunters, the breadwinners. Now – with few jobs here to be had -- there is nothing for many of them to do.

This woman worries that by speaking out, will be shunned by other Inuit. I asked her to paint a picture for me of what young men's lives are like at home.
They are sad, she said.
Their parents are drinking. They don't care where their children are.
They don't have decent or warm clothes, another reason they won't go to school.
They are packed into houses that are overcrowded. (There's a shortage of housing stock here so families double and triple up, sleeping in shifts.) The houses haven't been painted or fixed since the 1950s. The doors on the rooms might not fit.
“Part of the fault is ours,” she said. “We are drunk and punching walls.”

They are a generation in transition. “We've had, literally, just two generations since nomadic life.” She is in her 50s, and was herself born in an outpost camp, out on the land, as they say here

“We are just adjusting. We're good at adapting; this is the only way we've survived. A culture cries, gets angry, and moves on.”

Cameroon: Langue de bois

Christiane Badgley — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:55:40 -0400

Christiane Badgley, for the Pulitzer Center

I've been in Cameroon for a week now, and there's lots to talk about. I have to begin, though, with my efforts to get anyone connected with the pipeline project to speak to me. As I've been spending many hours in waiting rooms, I felt this photo summed up a good part of my week.

"Langue de bois" is a French expression: literally, a wooden tongue. Cliches. Hackneyed phrases. Spin. Waffle. What politicians and business leaders do when they want to talk without saying anything, avoid answering difficult questions, steer our attention away from unpleasant subjects, etc.

"As you can imagine, ExxonMobil receives many worthwhile requests from news organizations for interviews. Unfortunately, it is impossible to respond affirmatively to all these requests. Due to timing and other business constraints, representatives of Esso Chad will not be available to participate in the opportunity you present. However, for information, I've enclosed a case study of the project, as well as a 2008 news release that notes the benefits of the project."

That was ExxonMobil's answer to my initial request for an interview in Cameroon. I sent in a second request. Also refused. So shortly after my arrival in Douala, I went to the headquarters of the Cameroonian Oil Transportation Company, COTCO, to try to set up an interview. COTCO is a partnership between the Cameroonian government and ExxonMobil. The P.R. man at COTCO received me in his office, but explained that any interview request would have to be approved by ExxonMobil in Irving, Texas.

Of course he did tell me how important my work was and wished me the best of luck. "Bienvenue au Cameroun."

Now I'm in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon. Yesterday I spent a few hours with a former government minister who told me it wouldn't make sense for him to be interviewed as he is a member of the opposition. "You see, anything I may say that's critical of the pipeline, well, people will assume that I'm critical simply because I'm in the opposition."

Later, I sat for an hour outside the SNH (the state oil company). A very nice man eventually came to see me. He said that unfortunately the minister in question could not receive me. I was wearing pants, and Cameroon still has a rule that women must wear dresses or skirts to enter government buildings. I had forgotten about this law; the last time I encountered it was in the late 90s. Anyway, it was perfect; my request could be refused without being refused. However, the man told me that I could certainly come and film a training seminar on oil spill response strategies next week.

He also wished me good luck with my project and agreed that it is important to communicate the official side of the story...

Today I learned that COTCO representatives will be unavailable during my stay in Cameroon. I certainly haven't encountered any other journalists here trying to speak to COTCO officials, but apparently no one has 30 minutes to spare. Here's what I don't understand: If none of the project partners will speak, I'm left with only the critics. It seems to me that this story is much more complex than all sides would like to admit. So why won't ExxonMobil talk about the project from their perspective? Why not describe the benefits they believe the project has brought to the people of Chad and Cameroon? Why not respond to the critics?

Learn more about this reporting project: http://www.pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=135

Liberia: In journalism, when do you identify rape victims?

Jina Moore — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:40:06 -0400

Jina Moore and Glenna Gordon, for the Pulitzer Center

The rules are pretty straightforward. One: In crime stories, you don’t identify minors. Two: In rape stories, you don’t identify victims – at some papers, ever, and at other papers, without their consent. Unless the victim is a minor. That’s where Rule One meets Rule Two.

Two weeks ago, we met a rape victim we’ll call Hawa. We met her through a clinic that, like most institutions in Liberia focused on women who’ve been raped, is protective of her confidentiality. But unlike most of the women they see, Hawa wanted to be identified. And she’s 18.

Turns out, the two of us don't agree on how to handle this. Here's how we see the situation:

Jina (print journalist): On one hand, there’s no dilemma. She’s 18. She wants to be identified. Fair enough.

But there are some issues that require a little more reflection than even the clearest of rules might suggest. I think rape is one of them. It seems to me to demand a greater sensitivity than the rules say we have to use.

Here’s why: Women who have been raped – and others who have been through harrowing experiences, especially in conflict – experienced a situation of powerlessness. They have no agency in what happened to them; that’s part of what makes it a crime. When insensitively done, journalism can perpetuate that scenario.

The Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University is working on best practices in “trauma journalism” – stories about natural disasters, terrorism, war and genocide, and interviewing victims, and dealing with children. One of the things they warn against, in every one of these kinds of stories, is “re-traumatizing the victim.” And one way to avoid doing that – the Number One Best Practice – is to give the victim, who has become the source, as much control over the story as possible.

That doesn’t mean abandoning your journalistic responsibilities to tell the story, or your obligations to the reader. It can mean offering confidentiality or moving a conversation off the record upon request. For me, it also means re-negotiating the terms of the interview at the end. There are often moments where a source shares things with you they’ll later regret. I think that rape stories are not the kind of stories where you publish those things anyway. At the end of a conversation, I always ask again how a person wants to be identified.

Which is when Hawa told me I could use her name (which I’m not using here, because Glenna and I are still working out our mutual approach). She wanted to be fully identified – name and face – for a lot of reasons, some of which she shared with us and some of which we probably don’t know or understand.

So I think about Rule One and Rule Two. And then I think about the best practices of trauma journalism, which to me are more important. If she were 17 or under, this would not be a conversation: In these cases, we don’t use minors names, period.

But in this situation, ultimately I think using her full name, and publishing her photo, is the right thing to do – not because the rules say we can, but because she said we could.When she sits with me, she’s the one who controls her story.

Glenna (photojournalist): If Hawa were under 18, and she said I could take an identifying photo, I still wouldn’t. It’s not that I don’t think she knows what’s best for herself, it’s that there are rules and standards in place to protect the identity of minors. But Hawa isn’t a minor. And she wanted me to take her picture. She wanted to tell her story. She wanted to tell everyone. She wanted to shame the man who did this to her.

But I didn’t oblige.

It wasn’t an easy decision, nor one that I’ve yet come to terms with completely. But I decided not to for a few reasons. First, 18 isn’t the same as 25, or 45. Eighteen is just barely an adult. And here’s the other reason: while there are fewer Liberians using the internet than there are, say, Kenyans, there are a lot of Liberians in the diaspora. And they definitely use the internet. And, there also aren’t that many Liberians period. The country’s population is 3.5 million. So when you ask Sam if he knows Moses, chances are that he does. And if Sam in Minnesota (where there’s a large Liberian community) is using the internet, the chances that he knows Hawa are actually pretty high. And maybe Hawa is okay with Sam knowing, but maybe Hawa’s mother isn’t. Hawa still lives at home (though she is now at a safe house) and her mother’s approval is important.

And here’s another reason: Hawa has probably had little or no experience with the internet. She might not realize that by giving me permission to take her picture, Sam might see it. Even if he doesn’t see it now, he might see it five years, or when Hawa is 25, or 45. And I’m not sure how Hawa will feel about it then.

Learn more about this reporting project.

Liberia: When everyone knows justice is imperfect

Jina Moore — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:51:55 -0400

Jina Moore, for the Pulitzer Center

Photo by Glenna Gordon, for the Pulitzer Center

Glenna and I have spent the last week ferreting out details about Criminal Court “E,” or “the women’s court” as it is sometimes (derisively) called. The court was set up last February to try a growing number of rape cases. It started with a sweeping set of principles – expedient justice, confidentiality for the victim and the accused, sensitivity to the psychosocial needs of victims – but it’s been a little less than perfect in practice.

Some of those close to the court have told us about its imperfections: It’s only tried 3 cases so far in its first year, which will likely end in December. Meanwhile, the Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) Unit, which was established alongside the court to provide victims with services and to house the prosecutors, doesn’t have the resources it needs to conduct proper criminal investigations. Et cetera et cetera ad post-conflict infinitum.

But then there is the confusion we discovered in our reporting, as we tried to navigate the individual stories we heard. One family, whose daughter was raped by a gang of teenagers, had been told that unless the boys are adults, they’ll never face trial (not true, says the chief prosecutor at the SGBV Unit). The “rape law” sets the age of consent at 18 – meaning sex with anyone younger is automatically a crime – but the matrimony law sets the eligible age for marriage at 16. So can a 17-year-old consent? Does a question like that depend on a jury?

The jury, by the way, seems like a pretty good gig. From what we’ve gleaned, jurors are called into service in three month chunks (though we’re still not too clear on how this works), and they’re paid $6 a day, according to the jurors. Judging from their dress, it’s a serious civic duty: The 15 jurors milling about waiting for a trial to start this past Monday looked like runway models.

We’d show you pictures, but we’re not allowed. The confidentiality procedures in Court E mean there is no recording of any kind. No pictures, no taping, no note-taking. Or so the judge says, and the law gives her the discretion on these matters. That could be a nice shield of confidentiality for the victims – but it could also have the effect of covering up incompetence, or worse, in the courtroom.

Learn more about this reporting project.

A modest proposal for federal funding of journalism

Pulitzer Center — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:34:17 -0400

Joel Kramer, guest author

As the profits and the number of journalists employed in mainstream media continue to shrink, should the federal government step in to help sustain local public-affairs journalism?

In a report released today, former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Columbia University professor Michael Schudson say yes. It’s one of many suggestions that they make, but it figures to be the most controversial one. To a lot of journalists, taking money from the government would be an outrageous conflict of interest and an invitation to improper pressure on newsgathering.

Downie and Schudson propose that federal money (from taxes on telecommunications or Internet service providers) be distributed the way National Endowment for the Humanities money is distributed locally: through state-level councils that review and decide on applications for the funding. The funding would not be for specific stories, but for broader, longer-range innovations in newsgathering and organizational sustainability. Even so, it’s easy to imagine that that process could become highly politicized.

Unlike some of my colleagues in the journalism profession, I’m open to the idea of some federal funding for journalism, especially at the local and regional level, where the decline of the old business model is doing the most damage. Government funding need not lead to de-fanging the watchdog: look at the quality of the news operation of the BBC. But I think there’s a better way than having councils consider grant applications and dole out funds.

Earlier this year, I teamed up with Jon Sawyer, of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, to write a paper for a Duke University conference, in which we proposed a donor collaborative for nonprofit journalism. (PDF here.) The idea was simple: Instead of asking everyone interested in supporting this cause to vet every possible recipient, let’s invite donors to collaborate on a fund that will match donations already made to eligible journalism enterprises. This would ensure that money was being directed to efforts that (a) had demonstrated community support, and (b) were on their way toward sustaining their enterprises through their own fundraising success.

Why not just have government funding of journalism distributed that way - by matching voluntary donations that journalism enterprises are able to gather in their own communities, both from individuals and foundations? This would funnel the money to enterprises that are demonstrating that they have community support.

Under such a system, there would be no politics involved in the decision-making. There would be no accusations that the administration is favoring one ideology or using its clout to reward or punish. And the matching funds would make it a lot more attractive for local news organizations to ask their readers or viewers for voluntary support. It costs money to raise money, but if the money you raise will be matched, it becomes a better use of an organization’s limited resources.

What do you think? Should the federal government support public-affairs journalism? Should journalism enterprises be willing to take the money? If so, how should the dollars be distributed?

Originally published Oct. 19 on MinnPost.com

Cameroon: En route

Christiane Badgley — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:31:46 -0400

Christiane Badgley, for the Pulitzer Center

Here I am watching the Paris drizzle from terminal 2C at Charles de Gaulle airport, waiting for my flight to Douala.

In a few hours I’ll be in Cameroon to revisit the story of the Chad-Cameroon Oil pipeline. Six years ago the first tanker of Chadian oil left Kribi, Cameroon. At the time, there was much hope – in some quarters, at least – that the Chad Oil Project would help the people of both Chad and Cameroon. The World Bank was on-board, and an elaborate program was in place to insure that oil revenues were spent on poverty reduction.

What happened? That’s what I’m interested in finding out. We haven’t heard much about this story since 2003. The World Bank pulled out of Chad in 2008, but if you weren’t following the saga of the pipeline closely, you would not have known this. The Bank’s retreat hardly got a mention in the media.

My plan is to eventually travel the length of the pipeline, to see up-close how this project has really affected people in Chad and Cameroon. And from these travels, I’ll make a documentary film. (You can learn a bit more on my project blog, http://pipelinedreams.wordpress.com) On this first trip, I’ll explore the last 250 kilometers of the pipeline, a section that passes close to Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, and then continues through the rainforest to the town of Kribi, on the Atlantic coast.

The forest between Yaoundé and Kribi is home to the Bagyeli, one of Cameroon’s two pygmy populations. The World Bank and the ExxonMobil-led consortium were convinced the pipeline project would help the Bagyeli. As part of the mitigation process, the pipeline consortium established an indigenous peoples’ foundation to run health and education programs for the Bagyeli. Many environmentalists and civil society activists, on the other hand, feared that the pipeline would disrupt the Bagyeli’s already fragile existence. As many Bagyeli continue to rely on the forest for their food and their livelihoods, any damage to the local ecosystem could be devastating.

This is one story that I’ll be looking at in the coming weeks.

But now, it’s boarding time.