Media have an important role to play in Nepal in connection with the transition to a federal state, says Chiranjibi Khanal, director at Nepal Press Institute. Photo: Lotte Dahlmann/IMS

Media in Nepal stand before an immense task, when Nepal initiates the process to change the country from a unitary state into a federal state, said Chiranjibi Khanal, director at the Nepal Press Institute in Kathmandu, during his visit to IMS in Copenhagen

When the newly elected parliament passed a proposal with an overwhelming majority on 9 March this year to change the constitution to change Nepals unitary state into a federal state, it handed over a huge challenge to the media.

- What does it mean to live in a federal state? How will the new power structures look, and how will the states manage the increased decision-making powers they are being equipped with? And ultimately, how will it affect people's lives? These are important questions that call for answers. And here the media will have a very important role to play, says Chiranjibi Khanal, director of the Nepal Press Institute, during a visit to Copenhagen this week.

Need for nation-building

Following the long-standing internal conflict between various political fractions in Nepal, which lead to the downfall of King Gyanendra and paved the way for the reinstallment of the parliament and the election earlier this year of a coalition government which consists of former rivals, new fault lines of rivalry will materialize. Consequently, media will have to adapt to the new power structures and describe them to the general public.

According to Khanal, this will also be reflected in the media sector. Until now, the media sector is still subject to extensive control and falls in three main groups: government-controlled media, politically-controlled media and finally the media controlled by advertisement and production companies. These structures may be broken up in the new federal system as new alliances and fault lines occur.

- Nepal is in a process of post-conflict. There is a need for nation-building in Nepal, and the media will have a key role, says Khanal.

He describes how, previously, the NPI have organized a course in team reporting, where journalists from various media and different regions were teamed up and sent into the field to produce reports as a team.

- The course was succesful in offering insight into the situation in the rural areas and brokering a better understanding between urban and rural areas, and this is much needed in Nepal right now, explains Khanal.

The team reporting was part of a one-year project between Nepal Press Institute and IMS in 2007 that set out to bridge the divide between the regional media and the Kathmandu-based media as a means to improve the local and national reporting on the rights and concerns of marginalised and ethnic minority groups outside the capitol of Nepal. IMS originally conceived the concept which was later passed on to IMPACS until it was put to a halt in 2005 following the Royal Coup. In the aftermath, IMS has been deeply involved in conducting a number of international missions with other international organisations engaged in media development, press freedom as well as freedom of expression in support of efforts to bring the media in Nepal together. (Read more about the international missions to Nepal)

Learning from experiences in Balkan region

The NPI is preparing itself to offer training to journalists to properly dress them for the challenge, and Chiranjibi Khanal hopes to continue the team reporting project as well as to repeat a much successful training course in conflict concious reporting, which the NPI conducted with IMS in 2002. The institute is also lobbying to push for further independence of journalists in general. This, among others, includes advocating the need for good media legislation in the new federal state as well as in the different states of the federation.

Next week the NPI director will join a mission organized by IMS to visit media centres in the Balkans. The visit is a follow-up to la workshop in October 2006 on the subject: how to build sustainable media centres around the world, and participants in the trip include representatives from media centres around the world. (Read the report from the workshop)

During the visit, the NPI director is, among others, looking forward to speaking to the people at Media Centre Sarajevo in Bosnia-Hercegovina, as he hopes to benefit from the experiences gained by media in the Balkan region following the wars in the 1990s and to learn more about how media may handle the situation when a big country decides to split itself up.