For many in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the International Criminal Court is nothing more than an abstract institution based miles away in The Hague. Yet the ICC will be judging the authors of the worst atrocities committed against human beings in their country. Radio, the most powerful medium in Africa today, is helping make justice more concrete. A project called Interactive Radio for Justice seeks to build bridges between national and international legal authorities and people in the DRC's eastern Ituri region, where the International Criminal Court launched its first investigation into crimes against humanity and war crimes in 2004. Wanda Hall is the initiator and director of IRFJ.

How are you using radio to make justice accessible to people?
You have very different worlds, you have north-eastern Congo and a court based in the Hague in The Netherlands that is built on European and international criteria, history, law, and procedure. There has to be some type of bridge, and I believe that an interactive conversation is the bridge.

Radio is how people communicate in Africa, so I'm trying to create a conversation through radio, in the languages spoken by the community. I go to the markets, the internally displaced persons camp and the hospitals and I just ask people if they have any questions about justice. They can ask any question they want about justice: national justice, local justice and international justice and I will try to find the highest authority possible to answer every question. Every question deserves an answer.

Then we find the proper authorities to address with the questions and we record their answers. We do some editing so that it sounds like a conversation on the radio.

How  is the ICC perceived in the DRC ?
The war in Congo was an international war. People are interested in finding out what this international responsibly is all about. This is the first time that they've heard about international responsibility towards them, and they're curious, they want to know how it works, also in conjunction in their national structures.

Can you give an example of some of the questions you've dealt with?
Someone will ask it is illegal for the police to stop me on the street and ask for my identity card and then rip up my Id and ask me to pay a fine because I no longer have an identity card? This is something that happens on a daily basis where I work in north-eastern Congo. And so we recorded that questions, we went to the chief of police and we asked him if this was legal. He responded what the law was and he said who is responsible , where you make a report if that happens. And we put that on the radio.

At the moment there are two warlords from the Ituri province who have been arrested, indicted and transferred to the ICC in The Hague and we've done special programming on those transfers. We went to their hometowns and asked people if they had questions for the prosecutor of the ICC and the Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo has responded to the questions. It's important for him to have this dialogue with people in Ituri.

What has been the impact of this project?
It helped the authorities understand the priorities of the population , which crimes are the most important for them, and to understand better where they're working....

As soon as people started to hear their voices on the radio and hear them get answers from the minister of justice or the chief of police, or the president of the ICC, that gave them more confidence in continuing to work with us.

How do you measure the impact?
Awareness is not a quantifiable impact indicator, so we've initiated focus groups to gage the impact of the programmes. The base is Bunia, where there are four listeners' groups. We gave them radios and they convene in their neighbourhood once a week to follow the programming and then they discuss the programming afterwards, and they can either ask questions to our journalists and make recommendations.

What motivates you to work in countries in transition?
There's an important evolution in international justice, the fact that the ICC exists as the first permanent court that tries to guarantee certain rights for all human beings regardless of where they are, the right to be protected from the worst crimes on the planet. I think that's huge and in places where people have no concept of civil liberties and human rights and have lived absolute horror for years on end, that it's important to use this new tool to encourage people to rebuild their societies based on the rule of law.

When the international community invests in a certain region it's like a window of opportunity and I like to be there when they invest. I was in Russia in 1992-93, where everything was crumbling around you and you could find people who wanted to change their lives. I was in Kazakhstan the year of independence, Rwanda after the genocide, Congo after the war. It's just a time frame where a lot can be done in a short amount of time. There's a lot of energy. None of the rules apply. You can either use that to create more havoc and more destruction and you can use it to create little miracles.

One of those little miracles?
The fact that I can work with half a dozen of Congolese who want to create peace in their community and are willing to dedicate their lives to create peace day by day is a miracle.

The interview with Wanda Hall will be available on CD in the Africa in Progress series produced in partnership with community radio stations in Africa.