African Woman and Child Feature Service

8 January 2008

The second meeting of Senior Media Women Editors in Kenya was held today with the aim of firming the activities of the Heal the Nation Campaign scheduled to be launched on Monday 14th January 2008.

The group was in agreement that if they were going to heal the nation the focus of the campaign should not be just to end the crisis but also help the country to reflect on historical injustices that have not been dealt with. 

Some of the activities proposed were; talking to children through animated programming both on radio and TV; writing articles that bring out the strength and positive attributes of each community; the need to challenge politicians on their attributes during the interviews.

The campaign will take a multi-pronged approach which will focus on training, daily campaigns in the print, radio and TV, and documentation of the voices of those affected by the crisis.

The need to nurture democracy through the media came out strongly and this is because the citizenry looks up to the media to open up the democratic space.

Therefore, human rights, democracy, peace and justice ought to inform the programming or work on healing the nation.

The campaign also hopes to achieve the objective of making the citizenry understand the kind of political crisis facing Kenya and what it means for future electoral processes. It must also be unpacked and dealt with in the context of the crisis of an election, ethnicity and tribalism and inequality.

The issue is not a linear issue. It is a very complex and multi-faceted issue; it is also an economic, colonial, historical, political and cultural issue. It is sensitive to use and tone of language

The campaign can also be used as a platform for renewed debates such as the constitutional review and how best the public can bring to a closure the debate on the 2007 elections.