For months, "Zeitenspiegler" have been working on the media project Peace Counts in Ivory Coast. Their goal: to bring stories of peacemaking to the people – with sustainable success.
On the stage stands Fortuné, one of the most famous actors in Ivory Coast. He gestures, cracks jokes, rolls his eyes. Loudspeakers carry his voice far across the square, and photos are projected onto a giant screen. More than 1,000 spectators have gathered. Fortuné speaks of people who mediate disputes between nomads and farmers, advocate for political prisoners, care for war orphans, and turn former fighters into artisans.
His appearance is incorporated into the radio show “The Peacemakers” (“Faiseurs de Paix”), which has been traveling since early June and will be broadcast ten times from ten different cities by the nationwide government broadcaster RTI and former rebel stations – the first cooperation between radio stations that were still enemies until recently.
Since February, the originally German media project Peace Counts, led by Zeitenspiegel reporter Tilman Wörtz and the founder of the Zeitenspiegel agency, Uli Reinhardt, has trained a dozen journalists in Côte d'Ivoire, researched with them across the country, and subsequently worked on publishing the results on radio, television, in print media, and at public events. The project is supported and funded by the Goethe-Institut in Abidjan, as well as by the prize money from the Peter Becker Prize, which “Peace Counts on tour” received in May from Philipps University Marburg.
One of the results is a film by Berlin director Matthias Luthardt, which documents “Peace Counts in Cote d'Ivoire” and, together with the project, explores the question: How do you actually make peace?
For six years, Peace Counts has been documenting answers to this question in crisis regions around the world. This year, for the first time, they are working in Côte d'Ivoire together with local journalists. The country has experienced a civil war and is facing its first presidential election. The probability of a relapse into violence is considerably higher than after last year's presidential election in Kenya. However, perhaps the Ivorian “peacemakers” will make the decisive contribution to a peaceful election – if only enough Ivorians hear about them and take an example from these "Faiseurs de Paix" (Peacemakers).