Last week I went to Baghdad to work with the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights. Albany are contracted via UNOPS to provide them with training in human rights, media skills and public relations. The group of ten officials had already spent weeks in Jordan listening and learning from Cambridge’s own Jem Thomas and had gained some real expertise both in front of and behind the TV camera with Jordan Pioneers. It was my job to turn this knowledge into action – to apply it practically and set the team off on a strategic campaign journey.
During the week we spent a lot of time exploring perception. I began the week without introducing myself – instead asking the group to take a guess as to who I was. I did not tell them how correct they were in the assumption that I was a 38 year old, Catholic, Irish, mother of two toddlers until later (I wonder how their perception of me affected the way we interacted?) Despite throwing a wealth of information at the group, including a smart strategic campaign tool developed by imediate.org , I am convinced that I learnt more than them last week. Perhaps with an assumption that I was Irish, or perhaps because they felt relaxed in my company – I understood the depth of mistrust many Iraqis feel for the British. During a live session with American bloggers, my Iraqi friends were asked questions about how they viewed America, the invasion and George Bush. There was agreement around the room that America was too stupid to have been the brains behind it all – and that Bush was Blair’s poodle, not vice versa as many of my fellow Brits are inclined to believe. If I had known this perception of the Brits and of how deeply resentment was felt for the British post-colonial “abandonment” of Iraq in 1932, it might have made communicating with Iraqis three years ago in Basra a lot easier (and different). Understanding what people’s pre-conceived ideas of your nationality, gender, age is crucial.
Albany's Consultant, Caroline Jaine and the Media Unit of the Iraqi Min Human Rights
The perception in Britain of human rights issues in Iraq is largely driven by the media. Before I touched ground in Iraq I had jotted down a number of key issues that I thought would be of concern. My back-of-an-envelope-list proved to be just that, as a whole cacophony of abuses unravelled themselves onto wipe boards in the class room. Human rights abuses in Camp Ashraf were suddenly set in the context of far wider-reaching abuses in prisons and general displacement in the region. And the murder of a handful of homosexuals, although acknowledged as horrific, was immediately set in the context of vicious violence against women; the lost thousands who are anonymously buried in mass graves; and brutal terrorism which plagues the country – and seemed a minor distraction. As if to prove it, whilst I was there the largest terrorist attack of the year claimed nearly 100 lives just a few hundred metres away and sent us scurrying into bunkers for cover. I can imagine just how the British would be perceived if set against a backdrop of such huge scale murder and abuse they began to lobby the Iraqi Government to address Gay Rights.
Clearly the perception of the rights afforded us by the Universal Declaration are moulded by our own set of values and our own agendas, but I would urge every international actor working in Iraq (and elsewhere) to sit down with the people, gain their trust, and do more listening than talking. The starting point is to understand how you are perceived, and then understand the perception of the issue you are working on – whether it is counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, women’s rights in Yemen or an HIV education in South Africa – unless you understand the local perception of the issue, communications will falter and your own campaign journey may lead you down a blind alley.
Caroline Jaine is a Communications Adviser and a long-term associate of Albany Associates.