50 HEALTH RIGHTS Case study – Broadcasting health issues 39 In the Loreto department (province) of Peru, MINGA offers a radio programme to the dispersed and extremely isolated indigenous people who live along the tributaries of the Amazon River. The programme, Bienvenida Salud! (Welcome Health!) does not just transmit information to passive listeners; it creates a communications network among the people in these remote communities, thereby multiplying their possibilities for asserting pressure on the state. The mostly female listeners of Bienvenida Salud! write to the programme with questions about health (especially reproductive and sexual health) and with issues that have arisen in their lives, such as domestic violence. The programme provides information and reads some letters aloud (maintaining confidentiality). However, it also takes issues presented and transforms them into episodes of a soap opera. where ‘answers’ are not provided, but different perspectives are aired and humour allows people to identify with and enjoy the show. Both through writing their experiences down and through hearing themselves portrayed as protagonists on the radio, listeners effectively create their own messages and understandings of their health rights. Many of the thousands of letters that the programme receives contain complaints about rights’ violations by the state, including lack of health posts or health personnel. When these situations are exposed and denounced over the radio, people across these small and dispersed communities recognize they face similar problems and can join together to exercise greater pressure on the state. Letters also recount success stories (e.g. bridges that were repaired, health posts that were built, initiatives for reforestation and community control of natural resources), which promote a sense of effective agency. As the absence of indigenous languages in the public sphere is a form of exclusion and discrimination, it is important that the MINGA programme creates a space to exercise the right to express oneself in one’s native language. Before Bienvenida Salud! certain indigenous languages, such as Urarina, had never been heard on the radio in Loreto. Bienvenida Salud! promotes a more democratic approach to the medium of radio – including fostering participation by indigenous women and other marginalized people who rarely have access to a public forum – as a way of securing health rights and promoting a more democratic society. Notes 1 See Toebes, B., The Right to Health as a Human Right in International Law, Antwerp, Intersentia, 1999; Eide, A., Krause, C., Rosas, A. (eds), Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Textbook, Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff, 1995, pp. 125–43, 309–23. 2 ICERD, Art. 5(e)(iv).