stephanienolen

Thanks for asking. Really, at this point my heart is a billion tiny pieces held together with ... something. Gin, probably. It gets broken all the time. Last week it was the faces of the parents at the migrant station in El Salvador, waiting for their kids to get off the bus, so so happy because their kids were alive and safe and coming home, and so distraught because their kids were ... coming home.

One days in Swaziland when I was reporting on the impact of HIV I saw 3 little kids in school uniforms - white shirts, blue skirts, white knee socks - lined up at a gate and Siphiwe Hlophe, the amazing activist who was with me, told me both their parents were both dead of AIDS, and I said (grimly in search of a silver lining), Oh well, at least they're still in school! And she said, No. They can't pay school fees. They don't go any more. But they still get up every day and put on their uniforms. And then they stand there at the gate and watch all their former schoolmates walk by.

That may have been my low point as a reporter. Or as a human, actually...

I desperately wish there was better reporting on trade barriers, and on agricultural subsidies, so that people had a better understanding of what the impact of North American policy is on developing countries - it's really not about our (laughable) foreign aid spending, it's about what we do, and don't that makes things vastly more difficult for emerging economies.

Good question! I ask other correspondents who I know have worked somewhere I'm going, and if I can't find anyone that way, I call up the local papers and ask who on their staff speaks good English. The Lightstalkers network can be useful that way too. The best advice I can give you though is CRASH COURSE IN SPANISH. You will still want to have a fixer, but speaking the language is invaluable. (You probably know this)

Ah, CUP! I love CUP! I absolutely do think there's a role for student journalism - I learned SO MUCH working on The Watch at King's and on the Dalhousie Gazette. You face all the big ethical questions about what to print and what to prioritize and whose stories to tell and how to deal with pressure from big interests - when you run the show. You won't have that experience again in the "real world" until you're senior senior management somewhere.

There's a doctoral thesis worth of answers to this question. Quickly 1/ Lack of firearms regulation. 2/ Poor policing - especially a lack of public security training. New research for Amnesty International says that a fifth of homicides in Rio de Janeiro, for example, are carried out by on-duty police officers. (Not accidental deaths - murders.) 3/ Racism - young black men die at wildly disproportionate levels. 4/ A lack of understanding by a lot of people about the causes of systemic violence - so for example Brazil right now is lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 16, which is a move wildly popular with the electorate even though there is a MOUNTAIN of research that shows that not only will this not lower the rates of violent crime, it will probably raise them ....