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With grateful appreciation to the supporters of this conference:
Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations - Project Zivik (civil conflict resolution), of the German Federal Foreign Office, Heinrich Boll Foundation, The Porter Foundation, Nonviolent Peaceforce Japan, Nonviolence XXI, and the many other generous individuals and organizations who made this event possible. |
Participants of the International Conference: Building the Global Capacity
Ombok Otieno (NP Regional Coordinator for Africa) and Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Tuesday 25 September:
Opening: Singing, drumming, dancing by and theatre
Welcome: Brother Dominic Kariuki, Executive Director of Chemchemi Ya Ukweli
And Donna Howard & Omar Diop (NP Co-Chairs)
Welcome speech: Elias Omondi Opongo, Director of the Hakimani Center
Keynote speech: Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Civilian Protection & Peacebuilding George Washira: Director, Nairobi Peace Initiative
Presentation and discussion with noted author, Liam Mahony, Our responsibility to protect: experiences and lessons learned
Working Groups Session One:
Working Groups Session Two: Assessing Examples of Civilian Peacekeeping
Wednesday 26 September:
Optional time for reflection and sharing and movement
Welcome: Mel Duncan, Executive Director of NP
Panel: How can civilian nonviolent peacekeeping be further developed?
Plenary: Sri Lanka: A case study for providing human security
Working groups: How to progress on providing human security by nonviolent means?
Closing Plenary & Tree of Peace: Tree planting ceremony
Closing remarks by Chemchemi and Nonviolent Peaceforce
As the participants in NP’s International Conference gathered in the meeting hall of the Kenya College of Communications Technology outside of Nairobi, they were greeted by the drumming, singing and dancing of Fahari Africa, a performance group of young men and women from Nairobi. Next, the OLV Mahadara Junior Youth theatre troupe performed skits and songs about land issues, poverty, insecurity, peace and love in Kenyan society. The opening ceremonies concluded with a living representation of the Tree of Humanity, created by many of the conference participants, accompanied by words of inspiration from Ramu Manivannan of the Nonviolent Peaceforce International Governing Council:
This is a Tree of Humanity. We are all branches of this eternal tree with all its diverse colors, cultures, religions, regions and people. We are all one, branches of the same tree – TREE OF HUMANITY. Let us nurture this tree with love, peace and nonviolence. Let this tree of humanity grow and flourish forever, in peace, justice and nonviolence.
With these hopes in the hearts of the participants, the Nonviolent Peaceforce International Conference began.
Brother Dominic Kariuki, Executive Director of Chemchemi Ya Ukweli, the Kenyan hosts of the International Conference welcomed all the participants with the Swahili saying: “Mgeni aje mwenyeji apone – Let the visitor bring healing. This vision for peace, with deep roots in Africa, is powerfully reflected in Nonviolent Peaceforce’s (NP) third party nonviolent intervention.”
The NP International Conference was the largest peace gathering in Africa since the All Africa Peace Conference of November 1999. Brother Dominic expressed joy that it would bring spiritual, political, social and economic healing to Kenya and Africa as it brings hope to Chemchemi and all the other peace organizations in the region. “Where the spirit of nonviolence has gone low, we put passion into it, and where it has not been, we light it and help keep it burning.”
Donna Howard (USA), Co-Chair of the NP International Governance Council (IGC) introduced her fellow Co-Chair, Omar Diop who spoke about the last five years of NP’s work since its founding at the International Convening Event in Surajkund, India in December 2002.
Omar Diop (Senegal), Co-Chair of the NP IGC began by recognizing those who had traveled from afar to attend the conference and thanked Chemchemi Ya Ukweli for coordinating arrangements in Nairobi. He reviewed the growth of NP from a vision of promoting peace by placing unarmed civilian peacemakers in areas of conflict into an organization that now has international teams on the ground in Sri Lanka, Uganda, Guatemala, and the Philippines (Mindanao), as well as member organizations and coordinators in many other countries. Based upon this experience, he said, NP is learning many lessons.
Conflicts predominantly affect poor civilians, and prevent the development which could improve their lives. The UN and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) have always shown interest in protection of civilians and there have been advances. It is still critical to identify nonviolent tools that truly protect poor civilians.
Omar stressed that building the capacity for unarmed civilian peacekeeping is what NP – its member organizations (MOs), its governmental and NGO partners – in all its diversity of experience is doing. And, NP must construct networks everywhere in the world among these entities that will develop greater capacity for new, more effective missions and larger interventions. This has been the focus and the goal of the strategic plan that NP has developed to guide the next five years of the organization’s work. The plan, which will be discussed by the MOs later in the week, focuses upon strategic action areas and desired outcomes: especially NP preparedness to send teams into the field, defining the roles of MOs, improving administration, and increasing fundraising. We all hope the plan will advance the capacities of NP to promote nonviolence and maintain peace internationally.
Conference participants were welcomed by the Deputy Director of the Kenya College of Communications Technology (KCCT) – Mr. N. B. Muriuki recounted that the college was built on land that had been a British army barracks during World War II. Communications equipment left behind inspired the Kenyans to establish a school for media and information technology. In 1996 the college added a conference center to the campus, which has been the site of peace talks concerning Somalia and the Sudan, as well as conferences on health, human rights and HIV-AIDS. Thus a military installation has been transformed into a place of communication, peace and humanity – a most fitting place for NP to gather.
Elias Omondi Opongo, SJ, Director of the Jesuit Hakimani Center, and author of two books, Making Choices for Peace and Faith Doing Justice next addressed the conference on the peace building efforts of the African Union, so that the participants might keep the particular challenges of conflict, militarization, and human rights within the African region in mind.
African nations have struggled with the challenge of building stable and democratic states from the time of independence in the 1960s to the present day, especially in light of underdevelopment, poverty, poor governance, and corruption across the continent. An additional obstacle has been a history of conflicts. When Africa's independent nations formed the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, it was primarily designed to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of African states, and to see that former colonial powers did not continue to control Africa. Underscoring the need for peaceful resolution of disputes, the Charter of the OAU established a Commission on Mediation, Arbitration and Conciliation.
In response to local wars, a number of African regional bodies that had been founded to address economic challenges began developing mechanisms for conflict resolution, notably the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS), the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the Accord de Non Aggression et d’Assistance en Matière de Défense (ANAD), the Inter Governmental Authority and Development (IGAD), and the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). These regional political and economic bodies have been instrumental in mediating peace in several African situations.
In July 2001 African leaders established a new, continent-wide organization, the African Union (AU). Since its founding, the AU has faced the challenge of human rights abuse and loss of human lives in Darfur. As a result, the AU resolved to establish a Standby AU Force to intervene in grave circumstances of human rights violations. The requirement that interventions of the AU Standby Force be “only as a last resort” necessitates consideration of other means of intervention, including negotiations, sanctions, and creating buffer zones to stop the escalation of violence.
Father Elias concluded that the AU must urge all African governments to establish democratic structures that increase popular participation in governance. Structures that encourage widespread participation in the political, economic and social spheres of Africa are long term paths to sustainable peace.
Mairead Corrigan Maguire, winner of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with Betty Williams and the Community of the Peace People to end violence in Northern Ireland, brought an extraordinary note of warmth, heart and humanity to the conference as she celebrated the gathering together of so many advocates of nonviolence.
“We represent millions of people around the world,” Maguire told the conference participants. “What you are doing is important for the future survival of the human family. Our future as a human family must be nonviolent, or it will not be at all.”
We know well what the root causes of conflict and violence are, she said, but lack the human and political will to change our policies. It is the work of NP to convey a message of oneness and love, compassion and nonviolence that makes change possible. A message that says, “I am here because I care, and I want to stand alongside you.” The message must go out from all people that we can and we must move beyond what divides us.
“These are not naïve ideas,” Maguire emphasized, “these are life-changing ways, serious political change-making ideas. They cannot be ignored. We are not irrelevant and we will not go away. We know what we are talking about.”
Maguire recounted the years of violence she lived through in Northern Ireland. People wanted peace passionately; they just needed encouragement. The people marching were proclaiming through their actions: violence is wrong and we can’t take this anymore. Maguire insisted, “There are always options to violence.”
Maguire shared a Native American tale of a grandfather counseling his young grandson that inside every heart two forces struggle like two wolves. One is angry and bitter; the other is kind and loving. They are mortal enemies. The boy asks, “Grandfather, which wolf will live?” And the old man replies, “The one that you feed.” We must feed our hearts with peace, love, and joy; and bring these to the communities we serve. We must be happy peacemakers, doing our work with joy, love, singing and dancing. You teach nonviolence as you practice it.
“We have to dialogue. I would dialogue with anyone if l knew it would save one human life,” Maguire declared. We start with the people because people make peace. Support nonviolent movements on the ground.
George Wachira, Director, Nairobi Peace Initiative Africa, addressed the conference on issues of civilian protection in the context of peace building. Wachira brought the participants his knowledge and wisdom based upon 18 years of working within one peace organization, work that has included mediation, dialogue, conflict resolution and training.
Declaring himself an optimist, Wachira proclaimed, “Another name for peace building is hope building, which is also a critical element of nonviolence.” He urged his listeners to remember the success stories that are coming today out of Sierra Leone, Burundi, and South Africa.
The work of peace building is complex. Peacemakers need comprehensive strategies that focus upon preparedness, prevention and anchoring the work in foundational values. Elaborating upon these themes, Wachira stressed, “Conflict is inevitable, violence is not.” Therefore, peacemakers must proactively prepare to minimize the escalation of conflict and to lead people through conflict resolution, healing, reconciliation, and the rebuilding of community. Before conflict erupts, we can also be proactive: addressing social injustices, the structural causes of violence, and working to promote social justice.
As agents of change, peacemakers everywhere must question and be clear about the values they hold. They must be anchored in their values and aware of how they get translated and expressed in everyday life. Wachira asked all the peacemakers he was addressing, “To whom are we accountable? Do our values extend beyond our workplace? How large is our vision? How do we believe that change happens?” Within Nonviolent Peaceforce, we need to see ourselves as agents of change. We must move things, not merely take them as given. “We can do more than rearrange the furniture,” Wachira urged. “We must push the walls.”
Today the dominant mode of peacemaking is state-based and as a result the agenda is predictable. Rarely do the underlying issues that produced a conflict get addressed and as a result the peace may not be long-lasting. Moreover, the people’s expectations are raised by the announcement of peace, yet the state’s ability to deliver on expectations may be at its weakest following conflict. Expectations that are created and unmet become causes for renewal of violence.
Peace agreements are not the final solutions. Yes, we can celebrate them, but only if the celebrating marks a commitment to think anew about the root causes of violence and other issues that have not yet been addressed.
Liam Mahony, author of Proactive Presence: Field Strategies for Civilian Protection, the final speaker of the day, has been researching for five years to determine how to mainstream the lessons from peacekeeping teams already operating in conflict zones. His research asks how teams in the field can have a proactive presence, using multiple strategies to reduce violence against civilians. After examining a wide range of efforts, Mahony concluded that tactics are broadly shared by a variety of actors.
Protection demands comprehension of all the factors on the ground locally. Across many types of missions, Mahony found that analysis and strategic thinking were the weakest aspects. “We are not putting enough effort into gathering knowledge; we don’t have enough local expertise to analyze how to have influence on the ground.”
Mahony laid out five strategies for effective field presence:
Many international peacekeeping groups do not educate their members about or utilize these strategies. For those that do, there are very real obstacles to engaging in such activities. The biggest challenge, and the ultimate goal, is to reach a tipping point. Peacekeepers must recognize that their presence is incremental and operates in a milieu of larger forces. Their role on the ground is to complement external pressures for change. Even when the presence of a field team does not change the nature of a conflict, that does not mean it has not achieved some level of protection.
The current state of the art in civilian peacekeeping includes the work of many different actors: local civilians, community institutions, religious institutions, local, national and international human rights actors. Most of these are larger than NP – e.g. international humanitarian organizations. They have multiple agendas and differing visions. Their power and resources vary greatly, which can lead to competition and infighting. Finally, levels of competence vary widely and include high levels of incompetence – field teams without experience and teams that do not speak local languages or understand the local power structures or the national and international mechanisms of influence.
Mahony identified the constraints on providing civilian protection that many organizations face:
On balance, Mahony believes that for peacekeeping missions to succeed, they need to put more people in the field, and to send larger missions around the world, a great deal of effort needs to go into quality control, better selection of those who are sent, and better training. As peacekeeping efforts increase, organizations like NP have a particular responsibility to be realistic and practical while standing for principles that larger institutional actors may not uphold.
Mahony responded to questions about the potential for NP to work on a larger scale, or with the UN, and the liabilities posed by the current understanding of the “responsibility to protect.” He emphasized the complexities: large-scale field presence is expensive, you have to raise a lot of money, and so you have to use words like “human security” and “responsibility to protect.” So how can we build alliances and recognize good motives and individuals while maintaining the principles of our movement? What relationships will sustain our integrity? We must ask these questions.
Most basically, Mahony asked, “If we believe in nonviolence, how are we going to work with institutions that are not nonviolent, such as the UN?” In the UN, in the agencies and cultures focused upon the “responsibility to protect,” military intervention is seen as a useful tool. We cannot dismiss this worldview as a conspiracy of the military industrial complex, as it is a reaction to the lack of state response during past genocides. NP must ask, what is our relationship to these words? Can we redefine them and be careful about our identity as we use them?
Author and Researcher Liam Mahony of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (left) & Marcel Smits (former Nonviolent Peaceforce Sri Lanka Project Director)
Day Two of the NP IC was a panel discussion on the topic “How can civilian nonviolent peacekeeping be further developed?”
The panelists were:
Omar Diop (Senegal) Coaltion Senegalaise des Defenseurs des Droits Humains and Co-Chair of the NP IGC
Niru Vora (India) Director, Swaraj Peeth
Rolf Carriere (Geneva) Senior NP Advisor
Dorothy Ndung’u (Kenya) Nairobi Peace Initiative and Global Partnership for Prevention of Armed Conflict
Omar Diop focused on NP as an organization and its efforts to enhance the capacity for nonviolent peacekeeping worldwide. Fundamentally, NP works to encourage dialogue. Our field experience teaches that it is often easier to decline this mission than to accept it.
Our strategic plan has identified five levels at which to advance the work of NP:
Together, these goals will help NP grow into a larger and stronger international coalition with increased understanding, commitment, and capacity.
Today we are 90 organizations in 50 different countries. These numbers must increase in the future, bringing NP more local knowledge and making our field work more professional. This growth should also enhance NP’s capacity to manage and administer peacekeeping teams, to raise funds, and to strengthen our public profile.
Dr. Niru Vora described the work of SwarajPeeth, an NP Member Organization which she helped to found in 1992. Swaraj Peeth was established after a search for ways to communicate on a grassroots level and to offer people in India nonviolent, Gandhian means to improve their circumstances, live peacefully in their environment, and have meaning in their lives. The goal was to find small actions that would connect people to the larger nonviolent struggle for peace and justice.
Muslims in India felt they were both isolated yet in the spotlight. Members of Swaraj Peeth thought very seriously about how Muslims were feeling and how they were regarded. “We initiated dialogue with them. We received a massive response from people who were opposed to terrorism and war. As shanti sena, Sanskrit for peace army, is one of the most important objectives in Swaraj Peeth’s founding bylaws, we looked for a way to put it into practice. Then a community about 200 miles from Dehli invited us to come. The population there is mixed, 40% Muslim, 60% Hindu.”
“Our first meeting was in March 2004; work really took off in 2005 when 60 people pledged to live nonviolently and form a network of community-based people trained to prevent conflict from erupting in a big way. In that year we had our celebration of 'The Other 9/11,' a celebration of the birth of Satyagraha on Sept. 11, 1906. This program was carried out jointly with NP. Muslim friends in this area were totally overwhelmed and asked why this profound and moving legacy of history was not better known.”
“We found a hunger in the common people to understand nonviolence. In 2006 we expected 90 people to take the pledge, but 160 turned out. This gives us profound encouragement and inspires us that it is possible to take the message of nonviolence to many other areas.”
The Swaraj Peeth program of shanti sena involves four stages:
Through this work SwarajPeeth restores the capacity of local communities to provide peaceful responses to conflict.
Rolf Carriere next spoke on how NP might develop unarmed peacekeeping in collaboration with the United Nations. He based his presentation upon his 34 years within the UN system, mostly with UNICEF and mostly in Asia; since retiring two years ago, he has been a volunteer advisor to the executive director of NP. Rolf stressed that he was not speaking for the UN, but was reflecting on both the weaknesses and the opportunities the UN presents based upon his experience.
There are many visionaries within the UN and the UN provides many opportunities for unarmed peacekeeping to go to scale. However, the UN remains fundamentally flawed due to its being a state-based organization. There is, however, increasingly a willingness on the part of UN officials to work with civil society organizations.
The UN Charter states that military action is the last resort, but there has been no concerted attempt to use unarmed peacekeeping as a first or second strategy. Nothing UN staff does is the same as unarmed civilian peacekeeping. The UN alone will never be able to address all the conflict in the world and therein exists the opportunity for future collaboration.
We should understand that there are at least two UNs – one the forum of states that meet; the other the secretariats – at least 15 distinct units of the UN, which could and should be interested in unarmed civilian peacekeeping. Rolf asked the IC participants to consider several questions about the opportunities:
One possibility would be to form an international commission on unarmed peacekeeping to spotlight what has and can be achieved. Similar commissions on the environment and on the responsibility to protect were created and inspired historic changes.
NP needs national chapters in major donor countries; these exist in Japan and the US, but not in European countries. Schools and school children could study unarmed peacekeeping; UNESCO and UNICEF could help make this happen. Computer simulation games could be created so that children learn while they play. The UN staff college in Turin, Italy, should include courses in unarmed peacekeeping. Now that NP has received accreditation for Special Consultative status to attend UN meetings it should work to influence discourse there.
This will be a time-consuming job and we should not underestimate what it takes to do it well. NP has not yet made good use of celebrities who could help get our ideas out to many more people. Mairead Maguire, here in this room, is someone who can help us influence others. NP needs clearer goals and better annual reviews as a way to measure how we are doing with regard to meeting goals. This is important for internal evaluation but equally necessary as part of our public advocacy.
Carriere concluded by asking why the UN should be interested in working with an organization like NP on unarmed peacekeeping. He stressed the new understanding within UN agencies that they cannot do everything alone. The inter-agency standing committee on issues of security, for example, currently includes 10 UN agencies and 7 NGOs. This is the architecture that is evolving for collaborative arrangements. NP could begin to offer its service there, allowing UN agencies to use the readily available standby capacity that NP is working to create. It would avoid lengthy and complex UN procedures. The UN would be able to provide security at one-third of their current costs in a manner that would reach deeper into societies, be closer to local communities, and add an entirely civilian security dimension.
NP should position itself vis-à-vis the UN mandate as do Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross. NP's basis can be “the responsibility to protect” and all that entails. NP should be an indispensable part of an integrated approach to peace building. If we can say that we are the first large-scale, non-military NGO that specializes in peacekeeping, we will be able to provide, through partnerships, a more effective and integral means to a secure world.
Dorothy Ndungu then described the work of the Global Partnership for Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), which was initiated in 2002, at an international conference convened by Kofi Annan. GPPAC’s goal is to advance local efforts to prevent conflict. Various organizations began the creation of the network. Then in 2003 certain organizations were asked to be regional initiators, with the capacity to coordinate and assist in actualizing the plans of GPPAC.
The Nairobi Peace Initiative is the initiator for East and Central Africa. Each region organized conferences and came up with regional action agendas. Almost 1000 organizations and many more individuals are part of the partnership. You can go to: www.gppac.net to see some of the position papers that have come out of the national and regional meetings.
GPPAC has also created an advocacy document, which can be taken into any office of the UN to ask for support for its initiatives. GPPAC can be used to push forward many initiatives and it is a very good model for scaling up to a global perspective.
Challenges remain about how to actualize GPPAC’s agenda. Many areas of work have been planned; a major one is peace education. But it has been hard to find funding for this and for other activities of the partnership.
Your children will be warriors, she is told.
They will defend the mother-land.
She is not comforted.
Her tears blind her, but she keeps searching.
My children are not warriors, she says.
They are meant to be children, our children.
They have been abandoned by the mother-land.
Her tears stream in her wake, and she keeps searching.
The second session of the morning gave IC participants an opportunity to hear from Marcel Smits, Project Director for Nonviolent Peaceforce Sri Lanka (NPSL), and Aila Jibo, a Field Team Member (FTM) with NPSL. This session, “a case study for providing human security”, offered concrete lessons learned from NP’s largest peacekeeping effort to date.
Marcel Smits briefly explained the background to the conflict in Sri Lanka and NP's project. Since the elections of 2005, violence has intensified to the point that today, aid workers are threatened and many aid organizations are leaving the country. Foreign countries have suspended aid worth millions of dollars. The Sri Lankan government is under increasing international pressure to investigate the killings of 40 INGO staff. Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group have already called for intervention but the government has rejected international intervention.
Assassinations and disappearances have increased over the past two years. Children are being abducted daily and forged into an army of child soldiers principally by the LTTE and the Karuna Group, a Tamil paramilitary force that broke away from the LTTE and now dominates in the east. Recently, the Karuna Group set up their own courts and prisons, and is exacerbating tensions between Tamils and Muslims. This is the situation in which NPSL operates.
Thanks to years of work on the ground, NPSL has gained acceptance by local actors. The original focus of the NP mission was community peace preparedness: strengthening the social fabric and supporting dialogue by, for example, working with local peace committees. As the situation deteriorates, NPSL has changed its focus to the protection of human rights workers and seeing to the human rights needs of the people. Today, the acceptance of NP workers by local stakeholders can no longer be taken for granted.
Sri Lanka needs a multi-pronged approach to peacebuilding, but current opportunities are very limited. In the intense climate of fear, NPSL has largely focused on reducing child abductions, standing by people and communities at risk, and accompanying those who have had to flee from violence. There is an absence of safe space in which to speak with perpetrators. If the work of negotiating with perpetrators could be more consistently undertaken it would help strengthen communities’ coping mechanisms and curb impunity. NPSL has tried to keep dialogue alive, but it is extremely difficult.
The result of NPSL’s work has been some reduction of violence along with a significant reduction of fear and easing of suffering of victims. More people have been able to take action, document their cases, and receive attention from international agencies. All of this has bolstered the confidence levels of people, changed people’s behavior, and served as a kind of community empowerment. It is not, however, addressing the root cause of violence which remains the marginalization of minority groups.
The will to overcome fear and engage on sensitive issues such as child recruitment must be seen as a victory, due partly to the presence of NP whose work is complemented by international advocacy groups. NP has contributed to raising this issue internationally through the UN. Protests by mothers and by university communities would not have happened without the presence of NP.
In a very difficult situation where lack of progress is leading many international decision makers to disengage, NP has shown its capacity to remain on the ground and work in a war environment. Violence spreads a culture of war. With no room for discourse, what exists is a narrow space in which local populations are highly dependent on international groups. Community coping mechanisms are thus of great importance.
NPSL must continue to strengthen local communities. There are four main pillars for sustainable engagement:
With higher visibility, as long as it remains non-partisan, NP’s effectiveness can be increased. But Smits stressed the challenges and risks of the unpredictable situation and the very real dangers of war.
Making NPSL’s work sustainable will require:
Smits remains inspired by the coming together of 48 mothers from different villages in the east who were able to press the government for help in locating their children after they were forcibly recruited into one of the armed groups that operates freely in the government-controlled areas. NP was proud to stand by these brave women and record their hopes in their words quoted above.
Aila Jibo, NPSL Field Team Member, shared his perspectives on the situation in Sri Lanka. He brought greetings from all his team mates and stressed how proud he was to be working with individuals from Asia, Europe, America, and Africa.
The NPSL mandate was originally to reduce violence and increase the safety of civilians so that they might contribute to a lasting peace with justice. But strategic objectives keep changing with the changing situation and since the dramatic increase in violence in 2005, NP has had three principal objectives:
Where Aila Jibo works, the FTMs collaborate with and often accompany a local Catholic priest. In one specific crisis situation the priest alerted the FTMs about violence in the IDP camps. Humanitarian agencies that were monitoring the conditions of IDPs required 24 hour protection for one week.
Before NPSL had an established presence there was a massacre in the village of Allaipiddy. NP was called immediately but could not travel so the team called the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission because they have a mandate to visit when incidents are happening; they had already gone to the village. Early the next day FTMs went to the church in Allaipiddy and stayed there for a week. A community dispute broke out, as some wanted to evacuate the village while others wanted to remain. Community meetings were facilitated by NP. NP, with a clear exit strategy, left when humanitarian agencies agreed to come and maintain a presence.
In August of 2006, NP went on a staff retreat; while FTMs were away, the situation deteriorated seriously. The highway was cut and FTMs could not return. Other internationals were evacuated by sea. While villagers were taking sanctuary in a church, it was shelled, killing between 20 and 30 villagers. Now NPSL must carry out confidence building among the villagers who are returning. We are facilitating meetings among different stakeholders.
The risk is that NPSL could become viewed as just one more local organization. So it is vital that NPSL is visible internationally. It will strengthen NPSL’s position to be linked with missions in other parts of the world. This is a crucial part of NP’s building its niche, demonstrating a commitment to nonviolence and non-partisanship, and having a clear framework for its activities.
Aila said that everyone needs to build awareness of our movement. We need to all be sharing our experiences from many different settings and situations so that we become better at what we do. Together, we must develop our expertise, improve our practices, and then promote best practices with more specialized training. To make this happen we need more forums, international events and seminars.
Former NP Field Staff (from left to right) Peters Nyawanda (Kenya), Shiva Adhikari (Nepal)
Mel Duncan, Executive Director of NP, then engaged the participants in an examination of the importance and value of our work by imagining the chapters of a book about nonviolent peacekeeping. Duncan recalled how Gandhi understood this work:
There is a soul force in the universe which if we permit it to flow through us will produce miraculous results.
He stressed that we are indeed writing the book of nonviolent peacekeeping together.
Chapter One – What We Do Matters
Mairead Maguire sees us insuring the very survival of the human family; Liam Mahony sees all parties to conflict having multiple sensitivities that can be influenced; Marcel Smits and Aila Jibo spoke of specific actions in Sri Lanka that have provided protection and saved lives. What we do matters in Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Uganda, and Mindanao. We must not let others dismiss us and we must not dismiss ourselves. Nonviolent peoples’ movements will be the new superpower in the world.
Chapter Two – Resources
Look around, we have everything we need: a wealth of experience, courage, intelligence, and wisdom. We are growing a network that will allow us to respond to some of the needs for peacebuilding, but we must be deliberate and NP must not respond too quickly. At the same time this is not only about NP. There is a constellation of ways to work together.
We can connect and build alliances. That is one of the strengths of our regional networks. It is not only an audacious idea but it is an effective strategy in our world. Our vision, which will radiate out from this gathering, is about all of us as a people learning to deal with violent conflict in more effective ways. And as Niru Vora told us all, there is a hunger in the hearts and in the minds of everyone in civil society for nonviolence.
Chapter Three – Working on Multiple Levels
Nonviolence starts inside of each of us, as Young Kim, Ramu Manivannan and Brother Dominic have shown us. We need to foster nonviolence from the grassroots, through the national and regional levels – like the African Union that Father Elias spoke about – on up to the international level. NP and the power of nonviolence need international recognition.
Chapter Four – Tensions Within This Work
How do we exist as a movement and at the same time offer professional and quality peace team service in the field? We are becoming experts in civilian unarmed peacekeeping, but we must also maintain our creativity. We are continually balancing the philosophical vs. the strategic approach to nonviolence. These are tensions we must hold and if we do they will keep us strong and smart and alive.
Chapter Five – Structural Issues
We would ignore at our peril the issues of exploitation of resources, the marginalization of populations, and the legacies of colonialism that overlay conflicts in the world today. A search for the root causes of conflict and violence needs to be continually advanced.
Chapter Six – New Opportunities
We can redefine human security. We can shift the emphasis from securing territory, to supporting the human need for identity and fulfillment of aspirations. A rich vision of the “responsibility to protect” can replace the concept of protecting state sovereignty. Within the African Union there is now a doctrine that overrides state sovereignty where human rights are being violated. When NP Sri Lanka works to open up space in Valaichenai and elsewhere so that local people can raise issues and not be tortured or killed, we are helping to redefine human security.
We must continue to make space for new actors to promote human security in ways that go beyond reliance on the military and the police. Those new actors are us. NP can base its work on a global norm of “responsibility to protect,” but we must remain continually alert to and extremely careful of what is being done in its name.
Chapter Seven – Deep Understanding of What It Takes to Do This Work
Five years out from NP’s organizing conference, we are now able to look at lessons learned from Sri Lanka, and to learn from the experience of other peacekeeping efforts. We can be heartened, but we must also remember the sobering realities on the ground that our field teams in Sri Lanka and elsewhere face. We cannot step away from our responsibilities to the people doing the work of NP.
Chapter Eight – Acceptance, Credibility, the Trust and the Relationships We Build
This is the heart and the basis of all of NP’s work. We cannot, and we will not, lose sight of that trust and those relationships as we continue, as we write this important book – together.
Following the final plenary session, all the IC participants were invited by Ombok Otieno, NP’s regional coordinator for Africa who helped organize the conference, to gather in front of our meeting hall where Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire planted a tree in honor of our joint work.
Acknowledgements:
We wish to thank Terry Kay Rockefeller for drafting this paper, and Nick Mele, Mel Duncan and Jan Passion for editing
Delegates from Asia – Regional Meeting
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