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 Inga Sikorskaya works as the Director of School of Peacemaking and Media Technology in Central Asia from 2012. She is a professional journalist, media expert and trainer. Her areas of expertise include freedom of expression, peace study, hate speech, diversity and language rights, conflict and ethnic journalism.

Inga is the founder of the School of Peacemaking & Media Technology in 2010 after then she found herself in the center of the ethnic violence in the southern Kyrgyzstan and has made a numerous media reports and photos from the conflict zone. She initiated the constant media monitoring for hate speech, that until then was not in Kyrgyzstan and adopted research methodology based on international experience.

Mrs. I.Sikorskaya has wide international experience in media, conflict transformation, peace research and peace journalism training. This year she led some workshops for countering online hate speech, that have been supported by the OSCE Center in Astana (Kazakhstan), the training-workshops for youth journalists and activists in Kyrgyzstan and CA region. She was a member of a working group

Combating Hatred in Social Media – Exploring Interrelations with Freedom of Opinion and Expression to develop recommendations at the OSCE Chairmanship Conference on Tolerance and Diversity in Germany in October 2016.

She comments regularly on freedom, hate speech, conflict and media issues for the Radio Liberty, IWPR, other media and conference, and has been heavily involved to creation of the post-conflict policy in Kyrgyzstan.

Mrs. I.Sikorskaya is the author of more than50 analytical reports for the British Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR),where she spent seven years as a senior editor for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the most closed countries in Central Asia. Previously Inga worked in Kyrgyz TV and radio.

In 2015 she joined on research project for the organisation Peace Direct that funds and promotes local peacebuilding in conflict regions around the world. Inga’s role is of Local Peacebuilding Expert in Kyrgyzstan, she conducts research on peacebuilding, writes information on peacebuilding organisations and its analysis the approaches and cases which can be read the website.

In 2012-2013 she has been to Afghanistan, where she made a series of photo essays on "the back of the war” and create ​​the hand book entitles "How can women journalists make visual reports from Afghanistan". Besides she was one from an author of the handbook "Effective Communication" and "The Human Rights Reporting" for journalists and activists in Central Asia, co-author investigation "Health in Turkmenistan after Niyazov” at the London School of Hygiene&Tropical Medicine.

In 2015 Inga developed the firstonline course for journalists and activistsin Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia on how to cover ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity in time of peace and conflict.

She holds B.A. in Mass Communications and Journalism and M.A. in Law.

 

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Arif Aliyev joined School of Peacemaking and Media Technology as a trainer in 2011. He is professional journalist, has got rich experience in the media industry.Having become a member of the expert team of the School, he has developed a number of original training methods to destroy stereotypes of journalists and media editors in southern Kyrgyzstan. He specializes in peacemaking and ethnic journalism, is the chairman of the "Yeni Nesil” union of journalists Azerbaijan. Arif is also the initiator of the Baku Press Club project and the Press Council of Azerbaijan. Arif is a founder of the prestigious in the country journalism award "Key media." He is an author of more than 830 nonfiction works in newspapers and magazines, television and radio - broadcasts, documentaries, author and compiler of 14 books.

Publications:

http://www.osce.org/ru/fom/19476

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Eran Fraenkel is a specialist in the field of media and social change. International trainer on peacemaking journalism joined School in 2012, when he has successfully trained multinational group of reporters from southern Kyrgyzstan on production of reportage at post conflict area. New concept of journalism for Kyrgyzstan previously has been successfully applied during such a project in Macedonia in the Balkans, in the post-conflict period. In the framework of his activities Eran trained Kenyan youth and community groups to the development of programs of the media to conflict transformation.

He led the team that conducted the evaluation of the media in Afghanistan, and worked as the lead author of the "Afghanistan: assessment of media opportunities to build peace" report published by the U.S. Institute of Peace in 2010.  Fraenkel has developed a program for the training of young radio journalists in Aceh, Indonesia, and a new program to assess the media in conflict regions.

Publications:

http://www.usip.org/publications/iona

http://conflict-prevention.net/page.php?id=40&formid=73&action=show&surveyid=4

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Ashot Melikyan joined the trainers’ team of the School of peacemaking and Media Technology in 2011. With rich experience in the reporting on ethni conflicts, peacemaking and establishing peace between the warring parties, he is one of the developers of training materials for the training of journalists in southern Kyrgyzstan. This technique is based on the experience gained by reporters and media organizations of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the implementation of joint projects. Beginning in 2011, the technique was successfully implemented in the training course of the School of Peacemaking and Media Technology. Ashot was a professor of journalism at the University of Yerevan, was the director of the Media Association and coordinator of the Yerevan Press Club. Currently, Ashot Melikyan is a chairman of the Committee on Freedom of Speech in Armenia.

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Tevan Pogosyan is the first expert and trainer on effective communication, negotiation and conflict management skills. He opened series of

peacemaking trainings conducted by School for participants from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 2010.

His training skills are certified in the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University of the USA, Conflict Management Group in Cambridge in the USA, and his techniques on the destruction of stereotypes and the elements of the effective negotiations are being used by activists and journalists in Kyrgyzstan so far. His methods of teaching at the mediation were successfully tested in the post-conflict period in Armenian and Azerbaijani communities. Tevan is also executive director of the International Center for Human Development in Armenia, included in the list of the top 25 brain trust centers of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. At the end of the nineties, Pogosyan was the representative of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in the USA, and in 2012 he became a member of the National Parliament of Armenia.

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Vyacheslav Likhachev is an expert in the area of the ethno-political conflict solving, xenophobia on the post-Soviet spacepolitical extremism, the theory of nation and nationalism. He joined the team of experts of the School of Peacemaking and Media Technology in 2012. Vyacheslav deals with developing of training methodologies on media monitoring tools to identify the hate speech and conflict-prone attitudes for School, and conducts webinars on the ways of avoiding hate speech in public discourse.

 

 Likhachev also runs a program for monitoring and analysis of xenophobia Congress of National Communities of Ukraine, is the author of several books, 300 articles and more than 60 scientific publications.

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The analytical review "Hate Speech and Ethnical Stereotypes in Print Media in Southern Kyrgyzstan", which is a summary report of the Media Monitoring Group  for School of Peacemaking and Media Technologies on the results of several studies of media in 2010, 2011 and 2012, is prepared. During this period the group, which included professional journalists and media experts, conducted a study on the subject of identifying ethnical stereotypes, hate speech, and content analysis of publications on contentious.

Analytical review is based on a study of the content of articles in Kyrgyz-language, Uzbek-language and Russian-language press and random express surveys with a population and the media community of Osh, Jalalabad and Batken regions of southern Kyrgyzstan. The examples given in the report are accompanied by the originals scanned from newspaper articles.

The work is not aimed at the production of some recommendations, since the main objective of this study was the creation of an analytical framework for the development of training materials on peace journalism for training workshops conducted by Schools of Peacemaking for reporters in southern Kyrgyzstan and the Fergana Valley.

This report can be useful to researchers, human rights activists and journalists.(See here the full report >>1389984010_analytical-review_the-hate-speech-and-ethnic-stereotypes-in-the-print-media-of-southern-kyrgyzstan.pdf [1,32 Mb] (cкачиваний: 42))

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School of Peacemaking and Media Technology is a nonprofit media development organization focusing on peace research, advocacy, and training on media issues. Organization vision statement aims at supporting freedom of expression, access to information and citizens making informed opinions and decisions as a means of promoting an informed, democratic and tolerant society. We as well promote free and fair journalism in areas of crises and conflicts in Kyrgyzstan and the Central Asian Region.

Our organization was established in June 2010 after ethnic violence in the southern Kyrgyzstan for mediation and peacemaking training and capacity building of the local community in the post-conflict period. School of Peacemaking was registered as a Network of Social Mediators Public Foundation.

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