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No one can ignore the “communication factor”
of today’s conflicts. Either there is not enough press
coverage, and so one talks of “forgotten conflicts”,
or it’s thought there is too much, at which point it’s
termed a “media circus”, which did unfortunately
happen in the Great Lakes region recently. The happy medium,
whereby conflicts — and accompanying humanitarian concerns
— would receive constant and balanced coverage, is,
I fear, utopic.
Josué Anselmo did unfortunately experience the “excess”,
but it’s not because you have been the victim of a flood
that water should be banned. The occasional excess does not
justify a simple refusal to talk or, as in the example given,
a total withdrawal into “silence”.
Thus, the opinions expressed in the preceding article are
based on what appears to me to be a dangerous generalistion.
As a general rule, the ICRC believes that it is precisely
on those occasions when there is the greatest risk of confusion
and exploitation of information that the organization and
its representatives should be at their most clear and most
communicative. In principle, the ICRC does not have anything
to hide, at least not with regard to its way of working; its
operational success and the security of its delegates are
dependent rather on a maximum of transparency. Josué
Anselmo said it himself: when an information campaign was
carried out with the Burundian media after it had published
propaganda hostile to the ICRC, the tone changed completely.
Moreover, it is hard to prove that there is a cause and effect
relation between an exercise in communication and a security
incident. The case of the grenades referred to by Anselmo
makes one think rather of a premeditated desire to intimidate
than of a spontaneous outburst of passion incited by a radio
programme.
The media circuses of which we have had painful experience
were at least in part prompted by humanitarian organizations
saying any old thing or exaggerating for reasons we can well
imagine (money, money, money). The ICRC’s communication
policy naturally refuses such practices; when we don’t
know, we don’t make it up. It is not dishonourable or
harmful to say “I don’t know”.
If we can, legitimately, choose to put a specific —
humanitarian — emphasis on a fact or story, we can’t
expect the information made available to be recycled,
handled, distributed, weighed and counted according to the
strict criteria dictated by humanitarian interests. Indeed,
we must also take into account the media’s own requirements
in terms of communication. That is, we must accept that we
are sometimes asked questions of superficial relevance to
our immediate concerns for the simple reason that the institutional
message must remain credible. If, even for the most praiseworthy
reasons in the world, we were to devise our communication
policy and practice solely on the basis of our institutional
mandates, we would be quickly reproached, more or less openly,
of wishing to manipulate or distort information. If that were
the case, we would lose our credibility and that would be
very serious. It would create distrust and it is distrust,
not communication, that causes problems.
It is clear, however, that the ICRC cannot say everything
in all circumstances. The same goes for the press, which must
also practice self-censorship according to ethical guidelines
that at the end of the day are very similar to ours. For example,
a journalist cannot publish information, even if it is true,
that would lead to the death of a person. In the same way,
the ICRC can hold back information that could put lives in
danger or — and this is just a corollary of the same
principle — emperil the success of an operation, a definition
that naturally includes our protection activities. When this
happens, it is enough to take the person concerned into one’s
confidence (and I would say it is precisely the job of an
information delegate to know how to do this) in order to explain
the reasons behind such a public silence.
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