 Well, it's my pleasure to welcome Andrew Skeuss, who's an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Adelaide and involved at the conference in a panel that's on human networks and factors influencing effective communication, particularly in conflict or disaster affected areas. Just before we begin that some of the key messages of your paper, how did an anthropologist get involved in this field of civil and military relations? That's a very good question. My history with communication and conflict goes back to work I did in Afghanistan. There I worked for a better or worse on BBC Radio soap opera that was looking at conflict reduction issues, was looking at humanitarian aid delivery. I don't know whether you've ever heard of a program called The Archers. There's a very famous radio for soap opera that's been running for a long time. But it's basically like an Afghan archers that we were looking at. And I did my initial PhD research on the impact of that radio soap opera. And that radio soap opera has been running now since 1994. So continuous production in two different languages, Pashto and Persian. So had an incredible impact on Afghanistan. What an amazing project. In a nutshell, what impact? Well, I think in the various phases of the Afghan conflict, you've had periods where the physical delivery of aid has been very problematic. So in that kind of context where you have maybe an open war, you have a very nasty civil war going on at that time and very little donor commitment to the country, particularly in the post-Soviet period, 89 onwards. Often the only resource that people who were struggling in the countryside would have was information. So the BBC hit on this idea of taking this very famous soap opera and integrating some very kind of hard and contemporary lessons about conflict, things like landmine awareness, things about basic health, for instance. I mean, I can give you an example. It's very common for babies to die in Afghanistan because when they're born, they cut the umbilical cord, often with a dirty knife, and the baby will get neonatal tetanus and die. So one of the key storylines in the soap opera was about going to the bazaar to buy a razor, which is wrapped up in, comes in a little sterile packet, and if they can cut the umbilical cord with a sterile implement and then put antiseptic on it, it reduces the incidence of neonatal tetanus. So a lot of basic health information, humanitarian information, a strong emphasis on conflict reduction. An absolutely fascinating example of really innovative communication. You're talking about factors influencing effective communication at the conference. What are the two or three key themes or messages you're going to be exploring in your presentation? The work that we're... And I'm co-presenting with Joe Arson from ABC International Development. But the work that we're presenting on is emerging from an AusAid systematic review. A systematic review is a particular way of dealing with a large body of data and information. We reviewed many, many articles and sources looking for the factors that influence effective communication in fragile states. So AusAid are very interested in fragile states and how they can best harness communication. And just that term, fragile state, that's a term of art, isn't it? What does it mean? Anything that could be or is conflict affected. So in certain countries where you have weak governance, you may have a very weak footprint for services in, say, rural areas. And that would typify a place like Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the state, as we know it, only really exists in urban areas. And if you go into the countryside, there's almost no presence of the states. So that makes those particular rural areas very fragile and it makes the state fragile. There are many countries, particularly in Central and Western Africa, that fall under the fragile banner. Countries like Sri Lanka, to an extent, Nepal, in Asia as well. But the main majority of them are actually in Africa at the moment, so places like Rwanda, Sierra Leone. So you're going to be giving us some key lessons from an AusAid systemic review about how to communicate effectively in fragile states. Can you give us two or three of the big ones? Yeah, I think really what we're driving towards is the need for donors and implementers to look at a principle-based approach to communication. So if you want to have an impact, there's so many different things you can do in terms of communication. I gave the example of soap opera in Afghanistan. But if you look at the different interventions that occur in different countries across the globe, it's often dependent on what is acceptable in terms of media. It depends on what channels you have available to you. It depends on the type of message you're trying to get across. So rather than pick out particular examples of, say, talk about radio in Nepal or radio drama in Afghanistan or humanitarian information in Rwanda, what we've done is looked at the factors that influence successful outcomes or which constrain the outcomes. And it boils down really to looking at a set of principles associated with intervening in fragile states in the area of communication. So obviously understanding culture is critical. So working to understand things like media uses and preferences, what is acceptable and unacceptable in terms of content. There is the need also to think about participation. So generally, communication interventions that can work with and through communities have more impact than those that are just imposed on high. And that's a traditional contemporary kind of thrust within development more generally. And just one more? Yeah, well, evaluation is critical. I mean, one of the problems with all of this is that working in conflict affected environments is difficult. So it's difficult to develop the formative research to understand what you need to do. It's also difficult to undertake evaluation to find out what impact you've had. Well, this is just what I wanted to come to. I think I understand the idea of principles that can be applied in diverse range of circumstances in different cultures. But it's whether the communication changes behavior. So let's come back to the cutting of the umbilical cord. I think the most moving thing I've ever seen is a little kit that is distributed by UNHC, other United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which is a plastic bag and it has in it a plastic sheet, a tiny cake of soap, some string and a clean razor blade. And then one sheet of paper with no words that explains that if you have your baby on the plastic sheet, wash your hands, cut the cord with the clean blade and tie it off with that string, your baby will survive and so might the mother. And evidently they've saved literally thousands of mothers and babies. But it's getting it out and then getting the result. We struggle in Australia to get doctors and nurses to wash their hands in between beds. So messages go out, but do they change behavior? Any insights into that? Yeah, I mean, it's difficult in any behavior change intervention. If you're advocating, like the example you gave, access to resources or a service, that service has to be there. So you should never advocate a behavior change if there's no, say, commodity. So like in HIV prevention, it's all very well to advocate condom use. But if you can't buy a condom and you're a local bazaar in your village, what do you do? In a sense, it sends a negative message. So making sure there's a service or a commodity to back up the communication that's around behavior change is critical. And that's difficult to do often in a conflict scenario. And I think one of the key examples here at this conference has been Ramsey. Which is the intervention in the Solomon Islands. The intervention in the Solomon's. And they've been very effective at targeting communication to services like the weapons collection services, access to legal services, and the police as well. So they're very well matched with the communication with the actual service provision. I'll just have one last question because I think some of the practical lessons you're going to try and share in terms of action points go to donors and asking them to intervene early, to commit in the long term, and also to invest in methodological tools. I was particularly interested in that because that's the one that's harder to understand. If I give my money to Red Cross or Oxfam or UNHCR, why should they spend some money on methodological tools? What do you mean? Okay, well, if I start at the beginning of those three things, I think the need, obviously conflict can move through different stages. So when we talk about understanding a communications environment, we talk about understanding why conflict occurs. It's much easier to intervene in the period of latent conflict before open conflict begins. So if we think about three types of conflict, we have latent conflict in which there's the potential for conflict. We have open conflict when the conflict is hot and actually taking place, and we have post-conflict scenario. So we want to understand the communications environment and the potential for effective communication and what constraints you might face. It's far easier to intervene in a latent conflict situation than in an open conflict situation. So again, the early commitment to intervene at that point is critical. And again, we need to recognize that conflict does move through different phases and require different kinds of communication in those different phases. So the communication you would engage with in the post-conflict stage is different to the open conflict stage and the latent conflict stage. So again, I think donors often have a history of being in it for the short term. They're in it during the crisis and then they'll pull out. Where are the tools for the end? The tools really is in terms of helping you understand the environment that you're working in. So there's potential to develop rapid assessment methodologies that specifically focus on communications and match those communications to whatever stage you may be in that conflict scenario. So it can point you to certain outcomes and interventions. And could we end with an example of a methodological tool that guides an appropriate intervention at the right time? Yeah, yeah. Okay, there are a number of tools that have been developed for general use in terms of communication and behavior change. One of them is called ethnographic action research. I'm an anthropologist by training. So it's taking some of the methods involved in anthropology which involves what they call it kind of deep hanging out as they call it, which is observing and participating with communities to really understand the pressures and the constraints they face. But that would often occur over a year, 18 months periods of fieldwork. So it's about taking some of the principles involved in those kind of methods, condensing them and working with people to become their own researchers if you like. So you can train people to be participatory researchers and actually have a stake in the decisions that affect them. So importantly, development is about getting communities involved and helping communities to direct where the development goes and because obviously that is about their future and their destiny. I thank you so much. It was so interesting and I love to learn a new term and deep hanging out. Deep hanging out, absolutely. It is something I'll endeavour to do more of. But Andrew Skews from the University of Adelaide, thank you very much. Thank you.