Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Abbreviation	IWPR
Formation	October 1950
Headquarters	London
Sponsored by	National Endowment for Democracy, Norway/Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Sigrid Rausing Trust
Subpage	•Institute for War and Peace Reporting/Board

Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) claims to be an "independent not-for profit organisation that works with media and civil society to promote positive change in conflict zones, closed societies and countries in transition around the world." In reality, it is a tool for the US and other NATO governments, financed through cutouts like NED and the Soros Open Society Foundations (see 'list of partners' below), to influence international perceptions, propagandize the local population in targeted countries and create networks of regime change activists. It runs programs in more than 30 countries, in places as diverse as Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Iraq, the Balkans, Sudan, and Uganda.

IWPR supports local reporters, citizen journalists and civil society activists in countries in conflict, crisis and transition around the world, i.e. places where Washington has a foreign policy objective. It has coordinating offices in the Washington and the Amsterdam, and a global headquarters in London. The Dutch government runs extensive parts of its participation in NATO regime change operations through IWPR.

Notable participants

• Zaina Erhaim – Syria project coordinator for IWPR in Turkey. Working with print, TV and film, she has reported on the Syrian civil war from within Syria, and has trained hundreds of people whilst in Syria to be citizen reporters, notably a large proportion of them women.
• Malala Yousafzai participated in the "Open Minds" project, which brought journalism training and discussions of current affairs to 42 schools in Pakistan. Malala’s school, headed by her father Ziauddin Yousafzai, was a partner in IWPR’s Open Minds Schools Network. The program also edited their work and put them in touch with local newspapers.

Untimely deaths of members

On October 18, 2015, the IWPR acting Iraq director, Jacqueline Anne Sutton (a.k.a. Jacky Sutton), age 50, was found hanged in a bathroom stall of Istanbul's Atatürk International Airport. She had been on her way to Irbil.

Projects

• "IWPR’s longest continuing area of work is about creating a broader understanding of the trials taking place at the Hague tribunal for the former Yugoslavia" in the Netherlands.These trials have been criticized as victors justice, designed to whitewash NATO's role in the conflict. That makes the US/UK/Dutch government sponsored IWPR a natural fit.

• In July 2019, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting launched a Regional Leadership Platform in Tblisi, with support from the United States Embassy and the Foreign Ministry of Norway, "where regional professionals from academia and media, as well as the public, private and nonprofit sectors together to learn about disinformation and developing technologies" "Changemakers" from Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine and Moldova were taught how to "boost civil society resilience to both internal and external threats"...where "protecting citizens from false information was 'an ongoing and evolving task'".

Syria

In 2011, the IWPR had a "Syria Programme: Strengthening Independent Voices"For anyone following the covert Western intervention in Syria, the program will sound familiar, and conspicuously like the later exposure of how the "British government covertly established a network of citizen journalists across Syria during the early years of the country’s civil war in an attempt to shape perceptions of the conflict, frequently recruiting people who were unaware that they were being directed from London."

The program might have included one or more of the propaganda operations during the war like Gay Girl in Damascus, the twitter phenomenon Bana Alabed, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, White Helmets and the countless allegedly moderate, democratic "citizen journalists" feeding reports of barrel bombs, indiscriminate bombing and gas attacks to Western reporters outside the country, thereby creating an appearance of independence in the news dominating corporate media, when in fact is was a British-run operation.

The project declares it "will build local capacity, support the production and dissemination of independent reports and perspectives via innovative distance-learning and apprentice-style mentoring"...Participants are instructed in highly intensive one-week sessions in a number of key skills to improve their abilities as reporters or activists. The training includes "international human rights, minority rights and free expression laws and norms" (i.e. learning to use the right words to target Western liberal opinion). "The project will produce a number of unique, detailed, locally-produced reports and podcasts relating to human rights and democratic reform".

Beneficiaries are "local NGOs and activists;human rights workers and civil society organisations inside and outside Syria;an expert international audience of journalists, academics, activists and diplomats will also gain access to reliable information." The output "will be published and widely disseminated through the website, via email and across the internet in Arabic as well as in English."

• In 2010, the IWPR helped train and guide journalists and activists for the digital platform Damascus Bureau a "Revolution Digest" concentrating on social media news, to aid the regime change in Syria. Articles include "Syrians Call For Facebook Revolution", and "Children Defy Dictatorship, Syria’s youth revolution will not be deterred by regime oppression" etc. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting is not mentioned anywhere on the Damascus Bureau website. The Damascus Stories website closed in 2017.

Leadership

IWPR is an international network of three partner not-for-profit organisations governed by a board of trustees composed of senior journalists, peace-building and human rights experts, regional specialists, and business and NGO professionals. All Members serve on the IWPR International Board, to provide strategic, guidance, issues and regional expertise, development and outreach assistance, and direct support.

International Board Members

Full article: Institute for War and Peace Reporting/Board

Sir David Bell

International Chairman of the Board; Former Chair of Pearson Plc and The Financial Times Ralph H. Isham

United States Board Chair; Founder and Managing Director, GH Venture Partners Adrienne van Heteren

Netherlands Board Chair; Co-founder & Director, Small Media Foundation Anthony Borden

IWPR Executive Director

Chris Canavan

Director of Global Policy Development, Soros Fund Management

Richard Caplan

Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford

Lorne Craner

Founder, Redstone Global; Former Asst. Sec. of State for Democracy, Human Rights & Labor Janine di Giovanni

Senior Fellow at Yale University, the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs

Simon Hersom

Consultant, Value Retail Plc Michael Immordino

Partner at White & Case

Ralph H. Isham

United States Board Chair; Founder and Managing Director, GH Venture Partners Stephen Jukes

Dean of the Media School, Bournemouth University

Christina Lamb

Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Sunday Times Scott Malcomson

International Security Fellow at New America, Media Fellow at Carnegie Corporation

George Packer

Author & Staff Writer, The New Yorker� Zoran Pajić

Visiting Professor, Department of War Studies, King’s College London

Gillian Tett

US Managing Editor of the Financial Times Christian Toksvig

Media Outreach & Communications Consultant�

Ramsey Walker

Senior Vice President, Jordan Park

Executive Management Team

Anthony Borden IWPR Executive Director

Alan Davis Asia & Eurasia Director

Bill O'Callaghan US Director of Finance

Tanya Hassan Development Director

Michele Zeller Global HR Director

Seth Meixner MENA Programme Regional Director

IWPR Strategic Partners

   Albany Associates
    
   Adroit
    
   American Bar Association
    
   BBC Media Action
    
   International Media Support
    
   City University, London
    
   Deutche Welle Akademie
    
   East West Management Institute
    
   Frontline Club
    
   Hivos, The Netherlands
    
   Hostile Environment Training Ltd
    
   Human Rights Watch
    
   International Republican Institute
    
   International Crisis Group
    
   Kurt Schork Foundation
    
   National Democratic Institute
    
   National Endowment for Democracy
    
   Marie Colvin Foundation
    
   Partners for Democratic Change
    
   Thomson Foundation
    
   University of Arizona

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End
Adrienne van Heteren	Secretary	16 June 2005	24 May 2006

 

Sponsors

Event	Description
National Endowment for Democracy	The "traditional intermediary of the CIA", promoting the US "national interest" abroad by financing groups and individuals.
Norway/Ministry of Foreign Affairs	A significant donor to NGOs and planning organizations. Many of the recipients dovetail with NATO objectives like regime changes and controlling the narrative.
Open Society Foundations	A NGO operating in more countries than McDonald's. It has the tendency to support politicians (at times through astroturfing) and activists that get branded as "extreme left" as its founder is billionaire and bane of the pound George Soros. This polarizing perspective causes the abnormal influence of the OSF to go somewhat unanswered.
Rockefeller Brothers Fund	Rockefeller family "philanthropic" fund. One of the CIA's favorite cut-outs during the Cold War.
Sigrid Rausing Trust

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