With Senior Reporter and investigative filmmaker for AJ English Juliana Ruhfus in the chair, the panel will share their expertise and experience working as journalists covering traumatic events in Somalia, and reflect on the impact of such trauma for those who live and report in the country.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is dedicated to informed, innovative and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy.

Chair

Juliana Ruhfus is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker for Al Jazeera English specialised in human rights and investigative work. Prior to Al Jazeera Juliana worked as a freelance reporter/ producer for international broadcasters and twice as a consultant to the UN as part of a Security Council monitoring group tasked with investigating breaches of the arms embargo on Somalia.

In 2013 “Action on Armed Violence” named Juliana as one of the top 100 journalists covering armed violence. Her interest in journalism that deals responsibly with conflict and tragedy earned her the Ochberg Fellowship and a scholarship for Harvard’s Global Trauma Programme. Juliana now serves on the European board of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma and the advisory board for the International Bar Association eyeWitness project.

Speakers

Mary Harper, the BBC Africa Editor, has reported on Africa and from its conflict zones for a quarter-century. The author of Getting Somalia Wrong?, she has served as an expert witness and advised the European Commission on the Horn of Africa, and contributes to The Times, The Guardian and The Economist. Her latest book, Everything You Have Told Me Is True: The Many Faces Of Al Shabaab recounts her extraordinary experiences following the extremist jihadist

Ismail Einashe is a journalist and writer. He has written for the Guardian, The Sunday Times, NBC News, the Nation, Foreign Policy, Frieze, NPR and the New York Times, among many other places. He has worked for BBC Radio Current Affairs and presented on BBC Radio. Ismail has reported from over a dozen countries across Europe, Africa and the Middle East covering everything from migration, refugee issues to human rights and conflict. He is a 2019 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow, a Dart Center Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University Journalism School and an associate at The Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement at the University of Cambridge.

Idil Osman has worked for over 12 years as a national and international journalist for the BBC, the Guardian and the Voice of America, spending the majority of her career covering stories from the Horn of Africa. Through her work, she has developed a vast network of media contacts including those based in the region and the diaspora. She has authored publications that focus on media, migration, development, conflicts in the Horn of Africa and diaspora communities in Europe. She completed her PhD in Journalism and is an expert on diasporic media and development communications.

Image: Suspected al-Shabaab militants wait to be taken for interrogation during a joint night operation by the Somali security services and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), in Mogadishu. 04 May 2014. Mogadishu, Somalia. UN Photo/Tobin Jones. More info here.

Reporting on Somalia for twenty-five years, Harper has gained extraordinary access to members of Al Shabaab—and, disturbingly, they in turn have access to her. Visiting areas rarely accessed by foreign journalists, Harper paints a complex picture of life for ordinary people in the group’s grip—stories of tremendous loss, unbearable compromise, and unexpected profit.

Speakers

Mary Harper, the BBC Africa Editor, has reported on Africa and from its conflict zones for a quarter-century. The author of Getting Somalia Wrong?, she has served as an expert witness and advised the European Commission on the Horn of Africa, and contributes to The Times, The Guardian and The Economist.

Nuradin Aden Dirie is an independent consultant specialising in the politics of the Horn of Africa. His experience spans more than 25 years in the areas of regional politics, security, conflict resolution, humanitarian assistance, statebuilding and elections. For the past six years, Nuradin has been Special Adviser to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Somalia. In that role he was at the heart of attempts to support the establishment of a viable government as well as helping to set meaningful terms of delivery of international development support and to address the threat posed by al-Shabab.

In early 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online and with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, journalist and author Michael Scott Moore travelled to the Horn of Africa to research a book about piracy and ways to end it. In a cruel twist of fate, the 45-year old California native (with dual German and American citizenship) was kidnapped and taken captive by pirates. Moore comes to speak for the first time about his experience of spending five months aboard a hijacked tuna long-liner—the only Western writer to experience life aboard a ship hijacked by Somali pirates. Moore weaves his own experience–including physical injury, starvation, isolation and terror–with a larger examination of the world around him. He explores the economics and history of piracy (going all the way back to America’s own colonial history), the effects of post-colonialism (Italian and British); the politics of hostage negotiation and ransom (including Moore’s mother’s role in gaining his release); the legalities of industrial fishing and the role of Islam among the pirates.

Michael Scott-Moore is an accomplished author and journalist, a former Fulbright and Logan Nonfiction fellow, and a longtime resident of Berlin, where he moved in 2005. His comic novel about L.A., Too Much of Nothing, was published to acclaim in 2003, and Sweetness and Blood, his travel book about the spread of surfing to odd corners of the world, was named a book of the year by The Economist and Popmatters in 2010. Moore has written about politics and travel for The Atlantic, Slate, Der Spiegel, Pacific Standard, Businessweek, and the Financial Times. He now lives in Los Angeles.

Ben Rawlence  is a British writer who has written two books: Radio Congo: Signals Of Hope From Africa’s Deadliest War (2012) and City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp (2016). From 2006 to 2013 he was a researcher for Human Rights Watch’s Africa division. Rawlence has also written for The New York Times, The Guardian and London Review of Books.

Join us for a screening of The Ransom followed by a Q&A with film director Rémi Lainé in conversation with former chief foreign correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph Colin Freeman.

The Ransom dives into the secret system of Kidnap & Ransom, designed by major insurance companies in response to the 30,000 kidnappings committed every year around the world. International insurance companies have created kidnap & ransom, ultra-confidential contracts that are experiencing an unprecedented boom. Following a pending case in Venezuela, The Ransom, filmed in Africa, Europe and the USA, features insurers, negotiators and ex-hostages who speak out for the first time.

With exclusive access to leading hostage recovery agents, The Ransom reveals the cat and mouse games employed to bring a hostage out alive.

By following a few central characters in this interconnected world – often expressing themselves for the first time – The Ransom questions the price of one man’s life and reveals the impact of this vast global organisation on countries with a heightened risk of kidnapping such as Venezuela or Somalia. By emphasising prevention and increasing protection devices, aren’t we just increasing the vulnerability of those who don’t have the means to protect themselves?

“and the price of a man’s life has been determined by the price of things” (Saint-Just)

The Mayor of Mogadishu tells the story one family’s epic journey through Somalia’s turmoil, from the optimism of independence to its spectacular unravelling. Mohamud ‘Tarzan’ Nur was born a nomad, and became an orphan, then a street brawler in the cosmopolitan port city of Mogadishu – a place famous for its cafes and open–air cinemas. When Somalia collapsed into civil war, Tarzan and his young family joined the exodus from Mogadishu, eventually spending twenty years in North London. But in 2010 Tarzan returned to the unrecognisable ruins of a city largely controlled by the Islamist militants of Al-Shabaab. For some, the new Mayor was a galvanising symbol of defiance. But others branded him a thug, mired in the corruption and clan rivalries that continue to threaten Somalia’s revival.
The Mayor of Mogadishu is an uplifting story of survival, and a compelling examination of what it means to lose a country and then to reclaim it.

Andrew Harding has worked as a foreign correspondent for the past twenty-five years in Russia, Asia and Africa. He has been visiting Somalia since 2000. His television and radio reports for BBC News have won him international recognition, including an Emmy, an award from Britain’s Foreign Press Association, and other awards in France, Monte Carlo, the United States and Hong Kong. He lives in Johannesburg with his family.

The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, followed by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM.

Three course menu costs £25 per person – drinks not included.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Aurélie Bourguet.

Young Muslims are travelling from Europe to fight in countries such as Syria and Somalia, lured by groups like Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State (IS). Warriors From the North follows a cohort of young Al-Shabaab sympathisers in Denmark and Sweden.

The film focuses on a Danish-Somalian boy who gradually gained contact with the group and joined them in Somalia. With his back turned to the camera as he looks out over a nondescript housing development in Copenhagen, his friend “The Shadow” describes how the young man fell victim to recruiters and left his family behind to fight for Al-Shabaab.

In-depth discussions with former members of the Danish Al-Shabaab group break stereotypes about the profile of young men and women who join – many had supportive families, attended school and led seemingly normal lives until members of the community introduced them to a previously unknown network of Al-Shabaab devotees, and along with it a new sense of belonging.

Directors Nasib Farah and Søren Steen Jespersen approach the subject from multiple perspectives, speaking with current Al-Shabaab members, young men who have left the group and the family of one young man who left his life behind to join Al-Shabaab. A number of other very young fighters from other countries including The Netherlands, their identities concealed, explain why they left home and are prepared to die.

Directed by Søren Steen Jespersen
Duration: 59′
Year: 2014

From left to right: Agnes Odhiambo, Gauri van Gulik, Liz Ford, Liesl Gerntholtz, Rothna Begum and Samer Muscati.

The Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch joined The Guardian’s Liz Ford on Tuesday 13 May to discuss the highs and lows of the challenges faced in improving the lives of women and girls around the world.

The event took place as the world’s attention focuses on Nigeria’s kidnapped schoolgirls and subsequent failure to free the more than 200 victims from militant group Boko Haram.

Shining a spotlight on this specific issue is important, but everyday, harrowing realities are being lived by 39,000 girls subjected to forced marriages globally, said Agnes Odhiambo, researcher for women’s rights in Africa.

“You see it happening so much every day that actually you don’t stop to ask yourself what kind of suffering, what kind of abuses do these girls go through? In South Sudan, some girls actually think that death is better than a forced marriage. There are many cases of girls committing suicide.”

In the African context, she added, children being born into the family are of course celebrated but behind the scenes there may be a far more disturbing story, particularly around the issues of sexual violence and maternal health.

The panel was also keen however to point out successes in the fight for women’s rights, highlighting international treaties and conventions moving forward in earnest as well as grass roots initiatives that aim to tackle abuses against women and girls.

Director of HRW’s Women’s Rights Division Liesl Gerntholtz explained that the work her team is doing by collecting accurate information and evidence across some 90 countries is about “the long game” in making positive change.

“We believe, perhaps naively, that if you can just get the information in front of the right people that of course they will want to stop what is going on on the ground, and sometimes they do and sometimes not so much,” she said. “Particularly in human rights, those of us who work have to be willing to play the long game because change is always incremental.”

The fantastic @hrw women's rights division talk at @frontlineclub "It's all about the long game." pic.twitter.com/Xazvauj17c

— Alex Glynn (@alexglynn1) May 13, 2014

In some instances, the significant advances made grow out of local anger at terrible abuses, which HRW is able to take to the policy makers. In Yemen, marriages were happening at extremely young ages and both local and international outrage were ignited when an eight-year-old girl, Rawan, died of internal bleeding after being married to a man five-times her age.

The incident came in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings and after a transitional government took hold. HRW recognised an opportunity to bring gender issues to the negotiating table in the midst of a national constitutional dialogue.

Yemen now has a Child Rights Act, which includes setting a minimum age of marriage at 18 and criminalising those who take part in child marriage. Additionally, FGM [female genital mutilation] has been criminalised. The Act is going to cabinet, and HRW is pressuring them to pass it and send to Parliament along with other constitutional guarantees, said Rothna Begum, researcher for women’s rights in Middle East and North Africa region.

Still, hard and long fought for rights can be very fragile and quickly rolled back, particularly in post-conflict environments, said researcher for women’s rights in emergencies Samer Muscati, pointing to Iraq as an example where the space for women has shrunk considerably despite constitutional guarantees of parliamentary representation set at 25 per cent.

In Somalia’s Mogadishu, Muscati describes a conflict in which sexual violence is an every day fact of life for women and girls with a backdrop of stigma and lack of services to help them.

“They are on their own. One of the positives is that the international community has worked with Somalia to develop joint commitments. The challenge is trying to ensure that those commitments are met,” he said.

Pressure from developed countries could go far in changing the lives of millions of girls and women around the world, however, the UK is cited as playing a negative role – specifically in the recent initiative to tackle issues of forced labour that includes such categories as domestic workers as well as trafficked sex workers, said Gauri van Gulik, global advocate in the Women’s Rights Division at HRW.

“We hear a lot on one hand from Theresa May and others about how they want to end modern-day slavery. But in these negotiations and at this important moment the United Kingdom is saying we don’t want binding standards we just want a recommendation, or guidelines, which is extremely negative,” she said. “There is actually a lot of work to do in the United Kingdom when it comes to foreign policy.”

The audience was invited to ask questions and issues were raised around gaps in services for elderly women, women living with disabilities, or even highly privileged women bound by strictly patriarchal societies. Also, the audience heard how HRW tries to manage compatibility between the complicated relationships inherent to traditional laws where they may be in conflict with human rights laws.

Ultimately, people questioned how they could get involved apart from sending money to a charity and being directly involved to make a difference.

Gerntholtz replied: “Change is local. The most important thing anyone can do is work in their own communities . . . it creates a community of activists that you are a part of.”

Watch and listen to the full event here:

A week after the climax of the 3-day terrorist attack which started on 21 September at the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday panel on 2 October 2013 – chaired by BBC Africa Editor Solomon Mugera –  gathered to discuss the Kenyan government’s response to the event and how the once regional group al-Shabaab has grown into an international concern.

Solomon Mugera (right) chairs the panel including Mary Harper (left) discussing the Westgate mall attack

Mary Harper, Africa Editor at the BBC World Service, started off by asking the panel what their initial reaction to the attack was.

Hamza Mohamed, an idependant British-Somali journalist based in Mogadishu, Somalia and currently working for Al Jazeera English said:

“I wasn’t surprised…most of us who have been to that shopping mall [will understand], it was a matter of time… First, the security that was outside the shopping mall; you wouldn’t find that [lack of] in West End clubs to be very honest with you.”

Mugera was boarding a plane to Nairobi just as the attack started and as soon as he disembarked in the city he could sense the atmosphere:

“You could tell this was something serious. Kenya has suffered a number of terror attacks [in 1980, 1998, 2002] and now you’ve got this one. But these are not the only terror attacks on Kenya, you’ve had so many incursions into that country… grenades, insurgents coming in and terrorising police. So it’s not [uncommon], coming at this time [though] why Kenya? Is Kenya such a soft target?”

Kenya has been a target for attack from al-Shabaab since it pushed the terrorist group out of the capital Mogadishu and the highly profitable port of Kismayo, during Kenya’s invasion of Somalia in August 2011 and September 2012.

Packed out room for tonight's debate on the #westgate attack with @hamza_africa @jamalmosman @mary_harper @smugera pic.twitter.com/Jcrv8e969C

— Millicent (@MillyTeasdale) October 2, 2013

Harper asked whether the Westgate mall attack was punishment for the Kenyan invasion but also about telling the world ‘we’re here’:

“It couldn’t have chosen a more spectacular target to get top media coverage in the country, which is the media hub for East Africa for all the international media outlets. And the way that it managed its information campaign was highly sophisticated… the Westgate attack was not just about punishing Kenya, but also about telling the world ‘we’re here’ and a way of becoming a global brand.”

Ben Rawlence, who is an Open Society Fellow working on a book about the lives of Somali refugees in Kenya, said that the Kenyan government’s reaction has been direct consequence of the lessons they’ve learned during the invasion of Somalia:

“…Some of Kenya’s traditional knee-jerk discrimination and racial profiling of Somali’s has diminished in the last couple of years and I think that’s a direct consequence of the invasion of Somalia… It’s actually had to work much harder with the refugees, with the Somali community.

“If there hadn’t been an invasion, now there would be one. But because we’ve had the invasion, some of those lessons have been learned – which is why it’s been perhaps a cooler response.”

To address the problem of al-Shabaab further the panel delved into why they are so popular and what support they have within Somalia.

Jamal Osman, an award-winning journalist and filmmaker working with ITN and Channel 4 News said:

“Initially it was more nationalist; a lot of youngsters joined al-Shabaab when the Ethiopians invaded Somalia. And then later a lot joined for ideological reasons.

“They are very popular in the areas they control because they bring security, stability, law and order. And if you ask an average Somali in those areas, that’s what they care most about – they want to feel safe.”

https://twitter.com/Payitforward87/status/385497557515776000

Harper added:

“If you watch their propaganda videos and rap songs, they’re so slick and sophisticated and their use of social media is so impressive that you can understand that any bored young person living anywhere in the world… who has an interest or propensity to some kind of rebellion, that is something that would appeal to them… They really have most effective, attractive [ways] – it’s a horrible word to say about a group that can do the sort of thing that happened in Westgate.”

Mugera emphaised that this is no longer solely a Kenyan or East African problem:

“Al-Shabaab is no longer a Somalian militant group – that’s why you are hearing mentions of people from Norway, nationals of America, nationals of Britain… If it’s recruiting people… it’s receiving funding from these countries and therefore that internationalises al-Shabaab and this has got to raise concern by people beyond Kenya… Somalia…Uganda.”

“…You saw some of the people killed in that attack, we had Koreans in there, somebody from Peru. It begins to show you just how globalised a terror organisation can be.”

Watch the full discussion below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-kenyas-fight

On 21 September Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab launched a devastating attack on a shopping centre in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The confirmed death toll after the three-day siege is 61 civilians, six security officers and five militants, 61 people are still believed to be missing.

Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta has reacted by saying: “We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to. We shall get them. We shall punish them for this heinous crime.”

For October’s First Wednesday we will be joined by a panel of experts and journalists to discuss how the Kenyan government will respond and what the implications will be for the region. We will be examining the threat posed by al-Shabaab in the neighbouring countries and further afield, and exploring their origins and motivations.

Chaired by BBC Africa Editor, Solomon Mugera.

The panel:

Mary Harper is the Africa Editor at the BBC World Service and author of Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State. She has reported on Africa for the past 20 years, and has a special interest in Somalia. She reports frequently from the country, covering conflict, piracy, Islamism and other subjects.

Hamza Mohamed is an independent British-Somali journalist who has been based in Mogadishu, Somalia for the past year and a half. He is currently working with Al Jazeera English and was previously a BBC journalist.

Jamal Osman is a multi-award winning journalist and filmmaker specialising sub-Saharan Africa. He has been working with ITN/Channel 4 News since 2008.

Ben Rawlence is an Open Society Fellow working on a book about the lives of Somali refugees in Kenya. Previously he was a senior researcher on the Horn of Africa for Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War.

From Somalia to Iraq, Haiti to Columbia and many places in between, filmmakers What Took You So Long? do not only make films – they explore, connect and collaborate with communities worldwide.

Ahead of their distinguished Guerrilla Filmmaking Workshop at the Frontline Club, we caught up with the team for an exclusive Q&A:

First of all, will participants have the opportunity to make a film during the workshop?
YES!

How do you define guerrilla filmmaking?
Guerrilla filmmaking is about going in without an agenda, integrating with local communities and using the smallest amount of gear necessary. It’s about being able to convey compelling stories without lights, boom or massive cameras.

What have you been able to achieve which you wouldn’t have by “proper” methods?
Connection: to the people we film and the people we work with. The small effort to take a local bus, or finding a fixer/translator at an internet cafe gets you started in the process of participatory filmmaking.

Where has been your most challenging and/or inspiring location to film?
Somalia is challenging day-to-day because you’re never entirely sure that you’ll be safe. Most inspiring is hard to choose, but WTYSL’s recent journeys to Haiti have given us an in-depth look at a very stereotyped country. Western Sahara was problematic due to Moroccan secret service thinking we worked for Human Rights Watch. Uzbekistan was tough because our hosts thought we worked for the BBC and we had to escape.

How did you go about working in Somalia?
Filming the TEDxSummit in Doha motivated us to organise the first TEDx event in Somalia. TEDx Mogadishu inspired UNDP Somalia to contact us, and together we created the Social Good Summit Mogadishu. This lead to our visual capacity training with the UNDP, where we explored with local staff how they could use film and photography to share their work with the world.

How do you decide which organisations to work with?
It’s an organic process that comes from a lot of discussion with the potential partner. But our reputation is a good filter. We don’t often have to say no, because we don’t often get approached by people with missions incongruous to ours.

What’s the story with TEDx?
Sebastian was invited to speak about guerrilla filmmaking at TEDx Athens, and then about camel milk entrepreneurship at TEDx NHH in Norway. At TEDx Doha we met Nate, who was organising the whole conference. He is now an essential part of WTYSL. We like to think we stole him from TED.

Who could join WTYSL?
Anyone with a passion for filmmaking, nomadism and learning. Alicia and Sebastian are amazing teachers. You can tell by the makeup of the current WTYSL that we are all very different. We bring different things to the table and that keeps things interesting.

What’s most exciting about the workshop?
You’ll actually make something. The biggest barrier to break is the one that says we’ll be wasting our time and fail. In filmmaking you have to step outside of your comfort zone and do what’s right for the film.

Participants will get connected to our contacts in over 60 countries, and we’ll help get you kickstarted on your way to making great content.

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The comprehensive two-day workshop will cover both technical know-how and guerrilla filmmaking strategies. From live-streaming, iPhone apps (time lapse, photography, quality audio etc.), storyboarding and editing on the road – to finding accommodation (not hotels), inspiring the uninspired and incorporating laughing yoga into your visual life – this one of a kind workshop may change the way you connect to people.

Guerrilla Filmmaking with WTYSL will be held The Frontline Club on Saturday 29 & Sunday 30 June 2013. Click here for more information.

Bring your camera, wear comfortable shoes, and don’t forget your imagination!

All image credits: What Took You So Long?