People are still asking today how it was that the world failed to mobilise during the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Nearly a million Africans were hacked and slaughtered, making it one of the most appalling genocides in history — yet the international community didn’t lift a finger.
Could it be that the world (and even Africa itself) doesn’t really care a jot about what happens on the “dark continent”? Or was it the case that the failure to act was as much about the right information not reaching the right places?
In 1994 information flows out of and into Africa weren’t what they are now. At that time the internet had barely surfaced and the Mail & Guardian Online, Africa’s first online news service, had only just started to operate as a basic email-based text newsletter.
Information on the scale and horror of the genocide just did not get out quickly enough to touch the hearts and minds of international society, and so no pressure was put on politicians and world bodies to act. And when the information did get out, it was too late.
It’s as if this kind of thing could never happen in the developed world. Tony Blair sneezes and we know about it. More than 800 000 Africans are brutally hacked to death with machetes and all we hear is tumbleweed bouncing down the corridor.
During the Rwanda massacre, had the internet been as big as it is now, it is doubtful that such a crisis could have been so insulated from the rest of the world. Imagine the online frenzy that could have built up, starting via emails, forum postings and blogs, and then passing onto traditional media.
Of course, even now, Africa rarely tells its own story. It relies heavily on stories from foreign press agencies catering for a foreign audience, coloured by their own agendas and perceptions. It was precisely this problem that gave rise to a remarkable United Nations news agency called the Integrated Regional Information Networks, or IRIN. Two journalists and Nairobi-based co-ordinator Pat Banks founded the agency in 1995, directly as a response to the Rwanda genocide.
IRIN started off with three people in one country, as a text service covering Rwanda, Burundi, Eastern DRC and the refugee camps in Tanzania. It provided news wraps and verification of stories issued by wire services. Today it’s a news network covering 46 countries in Africa, eight in Central Asia, and Iraq. It’s about to add Nepal and Yemen to its portfolio of countries.
It has a staff of 53 international and national reporters, and about 66 stringers in countries where there is no permanent presence. IRIN also has a radio branch that looks after Angola and Afghanistan. It has produced mini-documentaries on the Darfur Crisis, the impact of opium on the peace process in Afghanistan, and most recently a film on sexual violence as a weapon of war, which was filmed in the DRC and Liberia.
Pat Banks sees IRIN as a “humanitarian news service”, designed not only to inform but to stir people into action. It’s a news agency set up to save lives and prevent atrocity. It’s all for free, because the idea is to make international decision makers aware of the crises and their underlying causes. Banks says the internet has helped magnify IRIN’s outreach “a thousand-fold”. Even in countries with poor internet access, local papers are often among the select few to have access to email and hence to IRIN.
So it is IRIN, more than the AFPs, APs and Reuters of this world, that’s telling Africa’s story and ensuring the world knows the good and the bad. Most importantly, it is there as the world’s conscience — trying to make sure Rwanda will never happen again.
Matthew Buckland is the publisher of the Mail & Guardian Online @ www.mg.co.za