Media Contact: Karen Louise Boothe
kboothe at nonviolentpeaceforce.org
612.871.0005

Note: Media Interviews with Mel Duncan in Minneapolis available upon request.

Minneapolis—The 2007 Pfeffer Peace Prize, given by the U.S. Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) in Upper Nyack, New York is being awarded to Mel Duncan, Executive Director of the Nonviolent Peaceforce—a Minneapolis-based international organization also with main offices in Brussels, Belgium and Colombo, Sri Lanka as well as staff and volunteers around the world.

The Nonviolent Peaceforce—a federation of more than 80 member organizations from around the world—is building a trained global civilian corps of unarmed peacekeepers. Peacekeepers carry out non-violent strategies in protecting human rights, deterring violence and helping create space in which local activists can carry out their work. Worldwide, violent conflicts are targeting the most vulnerable persons and the unrest often leads to humanitarian crises reversing the success of development efforts in democratically fragile countries. “We are providing peacekeeping when violence flares and building our capacity to respond more quickly to issues as they arise,” says Duncan. “Throughout the world people are coming together to create an effective, new method of dealing with violent conflicts” he adds.

The Nonviolent Peaceforce currently has teams working in Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Philippines with possible expansion of programming in Uganda and Colombia. The organization has trained more than 100 international peacekeepers for deployment, launched a professional registry and will have trained 250 reservists by the end of 2008.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) was founded in 1914 and is the oldest and largest interfaith peace organization in the US.

The Nonviolent Peaceforce was initiated in 1999 at the Hague Appeal for Peace and begun in 2002 with its first field project launched in Sri Lanka in 2003.