People

Pauline Bend

Senegal

Biography

Pauline is based in Niger as the country’s representative for Fondation Hirondelle, a Swiss non-profit organization that practices and defends responsible, accurate journalism in areas of conflict and post-conflict. She joined Fondation Hirondelle in 2015 to manage the “Studio Kalangou” project in this country. In this role, Pauline works on promoting communication spaces for the most marginalized as a key tool for peace. Prior to that, she worked in the development and media support sector at the Panos Institute West Africa, from 2006 to 2015, where she was successively Regional Coordinator of the Pluralism and Media Development Program, and then Director of Programs. She began her career in the Cameroonian diplomacy between 2005 and 2006. Pauline studied in Cameroon before pursuing higher studies at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and at the University of Rennes 2 and Paris 8 in France where she obtained a PhD in Information Science and Communication.

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“Professional and responsible media can play a crucial role in allowing people to better understand each other, to listen to each other and to dialogue and, therefore, lay the foundation for peace.”

Pauline Bend