این فصل را با ذکر تمام تیترهایش(ذکر تمام تیترهای مربوطه ی اصلی و فرعی) با حفظ ساختار و ماهیت به انگلیسی روان خلاصه کن : CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

Media Reform Initiatives in West Africa
K wA m E KARIKARI , Media Foundation for West Africa, Ghana






MEDIA REFORM STRATEGY 
As a leading media reform promotion organization in West Africa, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) initiated its advocacy work on major issues of reform through the following key strategies: Research and documentation of the issues at stake; the deﬁnition of objectives; the identiﬁcation of primary, second- ary, and vicarious beneﬁciaries of the projected reforms; the deﬁnition and iden- tiﬁcation of target authorities, institutions, or agencies to address; consultation with key stakeholders (including publishers, journalists, media professional asso- ciations, and human rights groups); the mobilization of stakeholders into activist committees or coalitions; the collective deﬁnition of key activities to engage in and the drafting of a plan or program of active intervention; detailed action plans for speciﬁc interventions or activities (including press statements, brieﬁngs, conferences, position papers, situation analysis, memoranda, petitions, public hearings and presentations, court litigation, protests and demonstrations); con- stant monitoring and evaluation of programs, activities, and interventions; and the continual sharing and communication of outcomes and challenges with the public and members of the advocacy constituency. The result of the implementa- tion of these strategies has been massive public support for the objectives of the advocacy, namely the right and freedom of citizens and groups (who can aﬀord it), to establish radio and TV broadcasting in Guinea without arbitrary state obstructions.
 
Advocacy work by civil society for media reform is central to democratic gov- ernance reforms in general. In West Africa, media reform activities demon- strate some of the most visible and vibrant civil society advocacy campaigns since the mid-to-late 1980s. It would not be an exaggeration to assert that the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)—a nonproﬁt, nongovernmental organization set up in 1998 to promote media pluralism, media rights, and media development—has been the most inﬂuential NGO in the advocacy work for those liberal democratic reforms in West Africa over the past decade and a half. It is a nonmembership civil agency, set up by a small group of media academics and professionals, lawyers, labor, and human rights activists with long, active involvement in popular struggles for democratization in the region.


THE MEDIA FOUNDATION FOR WEST AFRICA 

The MFWA is but one of many civil society rights advocacy groups that emerged as agencies of the region-wide popular movement for democratization and human rights across the region in the late 1980s–1990s. Many of these groups addressed issues at the community level, others at the national level. A few worked across borders on a regional scale, using the ECOWAS charter as reference point. Although regional in focus, the MFWA operates from a single bureau in Accra. Unlike other regional organizations, it has no membership base, branches, or aﬃliate structures in other countries.

mISSION 
The founding mission of the MFWA is aimed at promoting and protecting media rights and freedom of expression, advocating for media law and policy reform, providing legal defense for victims of media rights violations, strength- ening media to strengthen democracy, and supporting media in conﬂict and for peace-building.

GUIDING STRATEGIC AppROACHES 
Throughout its existence, the organization’s work has been guided by the fol- lowing key strategies:

a.	Clear and unambiguous deﬁnition of objectives and methods,
b.	Action-oriented research and investigation,
c.	Identiﬁcation of and encouragement to local/national stakeholders and or potential beneﬁciaries of positive outcomes,
 
d.	Broad and in-depth consultations with, and involvement of, national civil society agencies active especially in rights advocacy,
e.	Identiﬁcation of “favorable” links in government for possible access points (because no rights reform is possible without government partic- ipation)
f.	Consultations—and cooperation where possible and realizable—with government oﬃcials and institutions,
g.	Promotion of local and national stakeholders and actors as the primary and principal actors or agencies for advocacy and related programs,
h.	Support to strengthening the capacity of local and national stakehold- ers and actors to play leading roles, and
i.	Involvement, as much as possible, of UN sector agencies in the processes.

HISTORICAL AND p OLITICAL CONTEXT 
When the MFWA was established in May 1997 in Accra, Ghana, the West Africa region was throbbing with widespread popular demands for democrati- zation on the one hand and ablaze with brutal civil wars or threats of violent conﬂicts in many countries on the other. One of the key and concrete expres- sions of the dawning atmosphere of democracy and freedom was the explosion of newspapers in the streets of the capitals and big cities throughout the region. This was soon followed by an even higher impact explosion of the airwaves: Radio and TV broadcast pluralism. Liberia and Sierra Leone, then caught in the vicious throes of civil war, were not left out of the media revolution. The authoritarian state’s monopoly control of the mass media and the public space for public participation in public aﬀairs discourse was broken almost simulta- neously across the ﬁfteen countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Popular agitations, complemented by international donor pressure, com- pelled the extant, mostly authoritarian, governments to adopt new constitu- tions promising generally liberal democratic governance systems. But it was only in Benin where the very ﬁrst elections, based on the new constitutions, led to the replacement of the old, repressive military-based one-party Marxist- Leninist regime by a popularly elected government. All the authoritarian regimes, mostly of military origin, transformed themselves into civilian politi- cal parties and retained state power through the elections sanctioned by the new constitutions.
This partly, but signiﬁcantly, explains why the new wave of media freedom was met with such widespread violent acts of intimidation, repression, and persecution as never before. The vicious reaction of the states to the unmuzzled voices of the new independent and irreverent press and radio, threatened the
 
expansion and consolidation of the emerging freedom of expression and, of course, of other rights and freedoms.
Moreover, there was little, or insigniﬁcant, reform in the myriad legislation— dating back to colonial and early postcolonial regimes—constraining freedom of expression, journalists’ freedom to function, and censoring media content. Until this day, only Ghana has abolished, by parliamentary repeal, criminal defamation and seditious libel. Cape Verde, Ghana, and Nigeria aside, all other countries maintain the old criminal legislation on media and journalism prac- tice from colonial times. The Republic of Guinea was also the last to open up the airwaves to end state monopoly and control of broadcasting—in 2005.
Elsewhere in the region, media reform was acutely limited to structural ques- tions concerning ownership liberalization, and the establishment of statutory regulatory mechanisms—institutions that, in most cases, came under govern- mental control.
The general situation, even after the explosion of media production and the end of state monopoly and control, was characterized by three broad tenden- cies: Popular demand for media freedom and freedom of expression; growing threats to the emerging freedoms; and, reluctance (often even hostility) of governments (even in regions where the parties in power have been demo- cratically elected) to initiate or encourage broad reforms in media law and policy.

SOME KE Y MFWA AD V OCA CY STRATEGIES 
The organization’s Governing Council, the policy formulating and ﬁnal decision-making body, includes lawyers, media professionals, academics, labor leaders, and other rights advocates. The MFWA initiated or joined coalitions and networks of media rights–related and human rights advocacy organizations at national, regional, or continent-wide levels to mobilize as many forces around thematic issues and to promote speciﬁc campaigns for justice or for reforms.
The MFWA was the ﬁrst to initiate a successful region-wide system of regular, uninterrupted daily monitoring and publication of attacks on and violations of journalists and media rights—from the perspectives of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Started in 1999, the pro- gram continues to this day, issuing alerts whenever and wherever in the West Africa region there is a case of violation. The association was also the ﬁrst to provide legal defense for journalists and media prosecuted by the state under laws that make journalistic infractions and media outputs criminal oﬀenses.
The MFWA provided heightened publicity and gave considerable relevance to the regional judicial mechanism, the ECOWAS Court of Justice, when it sued the government of The Gambia to seek justice in a case of habeas corpus for a disappeared journalist and in another case of torture of a journalist by state security operatives.
 
The MFWA has provided safe haven for journalists ﬂeeing threats of death, suﬀering arbitrary arrests and detention, or experiencing other criminal vio- lence perpetrated by the state or dangerous nonstate actors. The MFWA has championed media law and policy reform advocacy activities and processes in nearly all of the ﬁfteen ECOWAS countries. An initiative for an ECOWAS statute or protocol for a standard media legislation is pending before the regional economic bloc’s Council of Ministers. In addition to these eﬀorts, the regional rights advocacy organization has initiated African and international partnerships to promote media development program in postconﬂict transi- tional countries.
The MFWA also set up a network of correspondents in each of the sixteen West African countries (including Mauretania), for monitoring and publiciz- ing attacks on and violations of media rights.
A ﬁnal noteworthy strategy is that the Legal Defense program was executed through a network of volunteer lawyers who provided pro bono services for needy and persecuted journalists and media outlets. The same team of law- yers, from diﬀerent countries, also provided advice on legal and policy reform activities, such as drafting proposals for alternative legislation.

OUT COMES OF THE MFWA’ S AD V OCA CY W ORK 

The contribution of the organization’s work to media rights promotion in West Africa includes:

a.	Substantial reduction in the incidence of violent state attacks on and abuse of journalists and media rights in West Africa;
b.	Increased cooperation and collaboration among media professional associations and NGOs working on media rights in Africa;
c.	Improved, increased, and regular promotion of media rights issues;
d.	Growth in activities and national groups addressing media rights pro- motion;
e.	Heightened publicity, and possibly increased awareness, of the work and relevance of the ECOWAS Court in rights promotion among civil society groups in the region; and
f.	Increasing use of ECOWAS and other continental and regional instru- ments and mechanisms in to promote liberalization of the airwaves, promoting rights issues.

SUCCESSFUL MFWA REFORM STRATEGIES 
The MFWA’s successes include the liberalization of the airwaves in the Republic of Guinea and the postconﬂict media development strategic plan in Liberia.
 
RE p UBLIC OF GUINEA 
By the year 2000, state monopoly control of broadcasting in West Africa existed only in the Republic of Guinea (Conakry). General Lansana Konte, who had come to power in 1984 and “legitimized” himself by winning elections in 1993, had embarked on exercises of constitutional reform. The reforms, however, remained on paper. The regime ensured that opposition political par- ties and independent civil society organizations could not function freely to exercise their rights of association and of expression. The regime hung on to power by brute force. Headed by a sick and dying old soldier, the regime began to fall apart the more violently it resisted popular demands for political reforms and democratization.
With mounting mass protests and widespread agitation, led by the trade unions, bureaucrats and top oﬃcials abandoned the state and their oﬃces. The crisis created a favorable political opening for promoting rights issues, includ- ing broadcast pluralism.
Through the monitoring of media rights violations and developments on the media scene in general, the MFWA monitored the political developments in the country. The organization initiated the liberalization of the airwaves project by using the following strategies:
a.	Researching and critiquing Guinea’s media laws;
b.	Drafting a concept note on the project;
c.	Identifying stakeholders and potential beneﬁciaries;
d.	Setting up a national committee made up of newspaper publishers, rep- resentatives of some rights advocacy organizations, oﬃcials of the state broadcasting organization, oﬃcials of the Ministry of Information, and a few independent lawyers to drive the project; and
e.	Organizing a national conference—attended by broad sections of media, civil society, and government—to promote a policy reform to open up the airwaves to citizens and their organizations.
All this was undertaken between late 2003 and June 2004. The result was massive public support for the objectives of the advocacy, namely the right and freedom of citizens and groups (who can aﬀord it), to establish radio and TV broadcasting in Guinea without arbitrary state obstructions. The minister of information, representing the collapsing government, openly endorsed the resolutions of the conference. Today, the country has more than thirty privately owned FM radio stations.

LIBERIA 
As the civil war in Liberia reached the phase of ceaseﬁre and peace talks, there was an urgent need for media reforms so as to enhance media capacity to
 
contribute meaningfully to restore peace, build democracy, and reconstruct the social and economic fabric of the society. The MFWA thus initiated an inter- national committee to develop strategic plans for postwar media development. The Partnership for Media and Peace-building in West Africa included Libe- rian media associations and rights advocacy groups; West African, European, and other international organizations working on media rights and media development program. It also included UNESCO and UNDP and attracted the interest of bilateral aid agencies and private philanthropic donor organiza- tions, which oﬀered assistance to the process.
The group undertook several consultative meetings with the Liberian media, civil society groups, and oﬃcials of the transitional government. Out of the con- sultations and studies conducted, a comprehensive media development strategic plan was developed. The outcomes of the activities included:

a.	The establishment of a national Liberian media rights and develop- ment advocacy agencies to promote implementation of the strategic plan;
b.	Contribution to constitutional reforms to ensure the protection of media rights; and
c.	Policy reforms including legislation of a new Right to Information law, making Liberia the second country in the region to achieve this.

CONCL USION 
Advocacy for media reforms in Africa during the last two decades and more has generally been boosted by the emergence in that same period of several media rights advocacy organizations and media professional associations. The need for media reforms arose from the fact that, while governments in most coun- tries lost control of the states’ monopoly of the ownership and operation of the media as a result of the popular agitations for democratic governance in the 1980s and early 1990s, little was done by the governments to write new laws and regulations to protect and strengthen the new freedoms won by the media. Instead, in response to the robust work of the new independent private media, governments unleashed a new, violent wave of repression of press freedom. The emergence of media rights advocacy organizations was a reaction to the threats government repression posed to the fragile freedoms of the new and young independent media. The international environment provided a favorable atmosphere for rights advocacy work. The governments had signed on to char- ters, protocols, and statutes of regional intergovernmental organizations (such as the African Union, formerly known as the Organization of African Unity, and the subregional Economic Community of West African States), which provided progressive legal instruments promoting these rights. These strategies
 
provide useful reference points for engaging those governments that accom- modated democratic engagement, or the basis for legal litigation against more recalcitrant regimes. Finally, these factors and developments have deﬁned and determined the advocacy strategy for the MFWA and its local, regional, and international allies and collaborators.