Professional Documents
Culture Documents
AMARC
Africa
Quaterly
Bulletin
No 9
July 2012
Content
AMARC ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS
l 1- AMARC at the Rio+20 Summit, the World Forum of Free Media and the
Peoples Summit .....P 2
l 2- The right to communicate is a necessary condition for
sustainable development ...PP 2-3
AMARC AFRICA NETWORKS NEWS
l 1- The Promoting. Development and Good governance through
Community Radio project, concludes ........P 4
l 2- NAMIBIA : A Workshop to Strengthen
the Community Radio Network P 4
MEDIA AND RADIO NEWS
l 1- BOTSWANA : Beware of the Communications Bill ........P 5
l 2- Zimbabwe : ZACRASs new National Coordinator .........P 6
l 3- The Mozambique Forum of Community Radios (FORCOM) ...P 6
GLOBAL EVENTS
l 1- The UN Conference on Sustainaible Development Final Declaration .P 6
l 2- Final Declaration of the Peoples Summit .PP 7-8
USEFUL LINKS ....;....P 8
Events
1- AMARC at the Rio+20 Summit, the World Forum of Free
Media and the Peoples Summit
he World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) covered via the Internet and through its world network
of community radios the discussions regarding challenges to sustainable development, including on biodiversity and climate change, at the Rio+20 Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from June 20th to 22nd, 2012. AMARC also covered and
took part in parallel civil society events like the World Forum of Free Media (WFFM), which was held on June 16th-17th, and the
Peoples Summit, from June 15th to June 23rd.
Maria Pia Matta, president of AMARC, participated in all those events. She was also part of the coverage done by Pulsar, AMARC
Latin America and the Caribbean News Agency. A delegation of community radio journalists covered successfully all those events
related to Rio+20 and broadcast information on activities, participants, debates and alternatives strengthening civil society
approaches to sustainable development and environmental protection via the AMARC website and
carried by participating community radios. The
coverage was the result of a collective and collaborative effort between Pulsar, AMARC Brazil,
Amarc Africa, the Panos Institute West Africa and
Radio Cupula. Pulsar News agency ensured coverage in Spanish and Portuguese, while Pulsar
Brazil coordinated the multilingual Peoples
Summit Radio (Radio Cupula), which broadcast
from June 15th to 23rd.
AMARC also actively contributed to the Rio+20
Summit as well as the Peoples Summit with a
communication rights approach to the development of civil society alternatives to neoliberal
globalization destroying our planet. AMARC representatives participated in seminars and debates
and networked on how community media can
best contribute to civil society debates in building
peoples alternatives.
Finally, AMARC produced a declaration entitled:
The right to communicate is a necessary condiAMARC President Maria Pia Matta at Radio Cupula during the Peoples Summit.
tion for sustainable development. n
Le Forum Mondial des Mdias Libres le 16-17 juin 2012 en marg de Rio +20.
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No 9
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We call:
l To include in the final resolutions of Rio+20 that the
right to communicate is a necessary condition for sustainable development and the protection of the environment;
l To establish clear objectives and specific terms for the
adoption by Member States of national legislations that
allow the exercise of the right to communicate in accordance with international standards of freedom of expression and the orientation of the programme of the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP);
l To support local, regional, and global civil society, and
to promote the participation of all individuals and organizations interested in the decision-making process that
affect their lives and their living conditions;
l To protect and exercise the right to freedom of opinion,
expression, assembly and dissension to create new fair and
equitable models of sustainable development;
l That governments promote the existence, sustainability
and the development of community media that respond to
the need of these people marginalized in the strategies of
sustainable development and that are the most affected by
the consequences of climate change;
l In the same way, we call the nations around the world to
rethink the current model of development, which is the
main cause of the consequences of climate change, replacing it with new economic, political, social and ethical systems that improve wealth distribution and that use natural
resources in a rational and sustainable manner. n
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2012.
The project which was funded by the Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA) sought to fight poverty and exclusion by improving the relevance and the quality of community
radio contents and increasing their social impact.
Il addressed VIH-SIDA, Malaria, and health related issues on
the first year; Water and Sanitation on the second year, Good
Governance, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution on the third
year.
The project involved 36 community radios from 6 countries:
Burkina Faso, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Kenya, Senegal and South Africa.
The project was conceived as different activities including:
knowledge sharing and capacity building seminars and mentoring activities, program production activities, content dissemination & and content exchange activities to amplify the voices of
the poor and excluded and evaluation for impact assessment.
The evaluation indicates that the project has achieved the following outcomes:
3 successive training seminars which each involved 12 representatives of the community radios involved in the project were held
in Abidjan, Cte dIvoire (March 2009), Johannesburg, South
Africa (July 2010) and Dakar, Senegal (December 2011).
The seminars trained the community radio participant journalists successively on the techniques and modalities of covering
HIV AIDS, Water and Sanitation and Governance issues from
the perspective of giving voice to the poor and to civil society.
A total of 36 community radio journalists were thus trained in
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University of Science and Technology and brings valuable experience to this important office having worked with many of our
initiatives from the start. n
ZACRAS BOARD OF TRUSTEES is composed of :
Gift Mambipiri (Chairperson), Peter Z Khumalo (Vice
Chairperson), Nigel Johnson, Micah Zinduru, Luka
Katako, Chengetai Murimwa
Global Events
1- The UN Conference on Sustainaible Development Final Declaration
fter more than a year of negotiations and a 10-day megaconference involving 45,000 people, the UN Conference
on Sustainaible Development Rio 20- held on June 2022, produced wide-ranging
outcome document - The
Future We Want - The document was lambasted by environmentalists and antipoverty campaigners for lacking the detail and ambition
needed to address the challenges posed by a deteriorating environment, worsening
inequality and a global population expected to rise from
7bn to 9bn by 2050.
The document calls for a wide
range of actions, among
many other points, including:
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tions in the official conference. In contrast to this, the vitality and strength of
demonstrations and discussions at the
Summit of the Peoples strengthened our
conviction that only the people organized
and mobilized can rid the world of corporate control and financial capital.
Twenty years ago the Global Forum, also
held in Flamengo Park, denounced the
risks whichhumanity and nature ran
with privatization and neoliberalism.
Today we say that, besides confirming
our analysis, there were significant setbacks in relation to human rights already
recognized. The Rio +20 repeats the
script failed false solutions advocated by
the same actors who caused the global
crisis. As this crisis deepens, more corporations move against the peoples rights,
democracy and nature, kidnapping the
common property of mankind to save the
financial-economic system. The multiple
voices and forces that converge around
the Summit of the Peoples denounce the
true structural cause of the global crisis,
the capitalist system of patriarchal, racist
and homophobic. Transnational corporations continue to commit their crimes
with the systematic violation of the rights
of people and nature with impunity.
Likewise, advance their interests through
militarization, criminalization of livelihoods of people and social movements
promoting deterritorialization in the field
and in the city.
Likewise denounce the historical environmental debt that affects mainly the
op-pressed peoples of the world, and it
should be assumed by the highly indus-
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these audits;
To guarantee the right of peoples to land
and territory urban and rural;
l For consultation and free, prior and
informed consent, based on the principles of good faith and binding, according
to ILO Convention 169;
l For the healthy food and food sovereignty, against pesticides and GMOs;
l For the guarantee of rights and conquest;
l For solidarity with the peoples and
countries, especially those threatened by
military coups or institutional, as is happening now in Paraguay;
l The sovereignty of the people in control of the commons against the attempts of commodification;
l By changing the matrix and current
energy model;
l For the democratization of the media;
In recognition of the historical social and
ecological debt;
l For the construction of the WORLD
DAY OF GENERAL STRIKE.
Let us return to our territories, regions
and countries to build animated required
to follow convergences fighting, resisting
and advancing against the capitalist system and its old and renewed ways of
reproduction. n
Standing still struggling!
Useful Links
n AMARC : Rio + 20
http://www2.amarc.org/?q=node/386
n AMARC Promoting Development and Good Governance through Community Radio in Africa
http://www.amarc.org/index.php?p=development_good_governance_africa_gov
n The World Free Media Forum
http://medias-libres.rio20.net/en/
n Panos Institute West Africa
http://panos-multimedia.org/flammeaf/
n United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development
http://www.uncsd2012.org/
n The Peoples Summit at Rio +20
http://rio20.net/en/
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