Unarmed civilian protection

While the physical safety of civilians amidst violence is often seen as a task of armed security actors (peacekeepers, police, etc.), a growing number of unarmed civilian protection (UCP) organisations have demonstrated that protection can be effectively provided by civilians for civilians without the use or threat of force. In a process organised by the international UCP organisation Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) between 2017 and 2021, representatives of 160 international, national and local organisations from 45 countries came together to discuss principles, good practice and challenges in nonviolent civilian protection work. Beyond UCP organisations’ evaluations and reports, however, there is still little publicly known about nonviolent protection provided by organisations specialising in UCP, and this work’s links with community self-protection practices.

A major international research collaboration, the Network Plus ‘Creating Safer Space’, has been set up to contribute to deeper understanding of, and to support, unarmed civilian protection and self-protection amidst violent conflict. The network currently funds 21 research projects in 10 countries exploring how violence against civilians can be deterred or prevented by civilians without the use or threat of force, how civilian capacities for protection can be strengthened, and how local efforts can be supported to transform conflict nonviolently as a basis for lasting, sustainable peace with social justice. Findings of one of these projects, a study of cultural-artistic organisations’ work of creating safer space for communities amidst urban violence in Medellín, Colombia, is discussed in the article ‘Art that protects’ in this issue.

Drawing on the work of this network, this article introduces the main practices and mechanisms of UCP, gives examples of how it works in different contexts and discusses some of the central challenges of UCP work. We begin by outlining UCP, its principles, methods and activities. We then explore monitoring as one practice of civilian protection, focusing specifically on the cases of Mindanao in the Philippines and Kachin state in Myanmar. These two cases demonstrate two very different settings for this practice, and as such they exemplify the versatility of the UCP approach. We end with a brief discussion of the possibilities and limits of UCP, which humanitarian organisations thinking of adopting a UCP approach may want to consider.

Unarmed civilian protection

Unarmed civilian protection, sometimes also termed unarmed civilian peacekeeping or (protective) accompaniment, is a method of civilian-to-civilian protection and civilian self-protection that seeks to reduce physical violence in areas of armed conflict by creating space(s) for peace. Nonviolent Peaceforce, the largest international UCP organisation, defines UCP as:

The practice of civilians protecting other civilians in situations of imminent, ongoing, or recent violent conflict. [UCP] involves international civilians protecting local civilians, local civilians protecting each other, and even local civilians protecting international or non-local civilians. The practice of UCP is nonviolent and generally nonpartisan. Protection is provided on invitation from local actors.

While many communities self-protect without any outside support, in this article we focus on UCP practitioners who are ‘external’ to the conflict, whether working in their home countries or internationals, and who either support existing local protection initiatives or build protection mechanisms for civilians who had not previously received support. Although the practice varies depending on context, these civilians usually live and work within the communities affected by conflict. The practice works by building effective relationships between UCP practitioners and all parties to a conflict, including both armed and unarmed actors, where possible. Different UCP organisations carry out the practice slightly differently, but most are generally led by the same, or similar, key principles.

Many international UCP organisations trace their history back to pacifist thought and embrace the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi’s Shanti Sena, a peace army of nonviolent civilians who worked at the grassroots level to reduce violence and bring peace to communities in India. This principle of working alongside communities is shared by all UCP organisations, some of whom employ national staff or volunteers, some international staff or volunteers, and some a combination. Whatever the specific UCP model, the vision of reducing violence in communities without the use of further violence remains.

Principles

While the principles of UCP vary from organisation to organisation, there are several key principles, some or most of which UCP organisations and practitioners identify with: nonviolence, non-partisanship, independence, primacy of local actors, relationship-building and civilian immunity in violent conflict. Independence and non-partisanship are not principles for all UCP organisations, some of which prioritise solidarity with oppressed peoples instead. Nonviolence, the centrality of civilians and civilian relationships, which in practice means that UCP organisations accompany individuals or communities upon their invitation and decide on strategies in collaboration with local partners and those protected, and a commitment to the immunity and protection of civilians, however, are important for all UCP practice. 

Methods

Relationship-building is at the heart of UCP. It is central to all other UCP methods, as it is through strong relationships with communities affected by armed conflict, armed actors involved in conflict and relevant local and national authorities that UCP practitioners can make their presence known, keep abreast of rapidly changing conflict dynamics, understand the protection needs of communities affected by conflict and take informed action. Facilitated by these strong relationships, UCP methods include advocacy, multi-track dialogue, confidence-building , proactive engagement, (protective) accompaniment, interpositioning, protective presence, rumour control, ceasefire monitoring, early warning early response, capacity enhancement and enhancing self-protection (see Figure 1).

Methods can be broadly split into three categories: physical protection, training and monitoring. Physical protection (accompaniment, interpositioning and presence) involves UCP practitioners protecting themselves and other civilians through their presence. Establishing a highly visible presence of UCP practitioners in areas affected by conflict (such as NP’s mission in South Sudan) or accompanying at-risk civilians such as human rights defenders, social leaders or environmental activists (as with the work of Peace Brigades International in Colombia) are common methods of bodily protection that rely on practitioners’ presence and role being known and understood – an understanding established through relationship-building. In interpositioning, practitioners put themselves in the way of opposing parties to create a physical barrier between them. There is ongoing debate within practitioner communities, however, about the role that privilege based on race, class and nationality plays in some forms of bodily protection and the possibility of decolonising these practices.

Training is a second important aspect of the work of many UCP organisations. Commonly referred to as ‘capacity enhancement’, training conflict-affected communities in self-protection methods, as well as confidence-building in these methods, is a nonviolent way to support communities in self-protection. Armed actors, too, can receive training and capacity enhancement through UCP practitioners. In both the Philippines and Myanmar, for example, UCP teams have trained military personnel in international human rights law and conflict-relevant international or national agreements signed by their governments. This has helped both to widen the legal knowledge base among armed actors and to educate them about the legal basis upon which UCP teams carry out their work.

Civilian conflict monitoring: between institutionalisation and improvisation

The final group of UCP methods is monitoring. The term monitoring can refer to several things, including conflict monitoring, rumour monitoring and control and ceasefire monitoring. Conflict monitoring is central to UCP work, as practitioners rely on their knowledge of and information about changes in an armed conflict and ensuing civilian protection needs to be able to carry out their work. Conflict monitors build an understanding of developments through their relationships with local communities and armed actors, as well as by monitoring news sources and reports from other organisations. Monitoring and controlling the spread of rumours is another key aspect in conflict de-escalation, as rumours of imminent threats can quickly spread and mobilise armed opposition. Where such rumours are true, UCP practitioners aim to support civilians in their protection or even flight, while ensuring that information being circulated is accurate and will not result in further escalation of tensions. Ceasefire monitoring by UCP practitioners happens only in some contexts but can be effective. UCP practitioners can be well placed to practice monitoring as they are not party to conflict and are usually embedded in local communiti­­es and able to pick up on early signs of rising tensions.

Mindanao, Philippines

In Mindanao in the Philippines, where a peace agreement was negotiated between the government and the insurgent Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2014, Nonviolent Peaceforce Philippines (NPP) and three local non-governmental organisations (NGO) have been official members of the International Monitoring Team (IMT) under its Civilian Protection Component (CPC), meaning that civilian protection practitioners have been actively involved in a ceasefire monitoring process. This process wrote UCP explicitly into an international peace agreement for the first time. The CPC organisations monitored and investigated breaches of the agreement and de-escalated violence on the ground. They also trained thousands of people in human rights, violence reduction and relationship-building, who in turn built new mechanisms to make their communities safer. NPP is now also officially recognised by the Joint Normalization Committee (JNC) to support the Bangsamoro Normalization process, the mechanism which implements the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). 

Beyond ceasefire monitoring, UCP tasks and strategies in Mindanao have included rumour control to de-escalate community violence, preventing displacement, helping with the safe return of internally displaced persons (IDPs), monitoring and investigation of violent incidents, and training local people in UCP. Through community early warning and early response, local communities are taking preventive action (e.g. reporting violence, using a protection activity such as fleeing, negotiating, confronting or calling someone for help). Indigenous community-led peace zones in different parts of the Philippines provide examples of how communities have organised to protect themselves from armed violence.

UCP has adapted throughout the peace process and continues to do so. While the conflict with the MILF ended with the peace agreement and the creation of the BARMM, other forms of violence continue, ranging from the activities of several smaller armed groups to rido, a form of community violence. Mindanao has seen a resurgence of violent conflict within the BARMM, specifically in areas referred to by the military as the ‘SPMS Box’, which are alleged strongholds of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, a MILF splinter group that rejected the peace agreement. All this has led to a continuation of UCP work by international and local organisations and takes place in close collaboration between international NGOs such as NP and local organisations such as Bantay Ceasefire and the Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society  – some of which will be studied in a forthcoming ‘Creating Safer Space’ project. Indeed, when asked about good practices of international UCP organisations working with local partners at a UCP workshop in Manila, representatives of such local UCP organisations were clear that they see the work of international and local organisations as complementary, that ‘local and international actors can play crucial roles depending on the specific context, and that they should engage in a process of “co-production” of protection’.  

Kachin state, Myanmar

The close community work carried out on the ground by NPP in Mindanao, on the invitation of and in collaboration with its local partners, has been largely impossible for its sister mission, Nonviolent Peaceforce Myanmar (NPM). Even during Myanmar’s period of democratic opening between 2011 and 2021, NPM staff (including national staff) themselves were not directly involved in community protection on the ground, due to official access restrictions for foreign organisations. Between 2014 and 2021, NPM was therefore mainly involved in training local volunteer Civilian Conflict Monitors (CCMs), later renamed Community Peace Observers in the context of emerging national ceasefire and peace negotiations. This training was initiated on invitation by and in collaboration with Burmese civil society organisations, who took the lead in implementing UCP strategies in eight conflict-affected states of Myanmar. Conflict monitoring thus took on a very different character from the institutionalised process in Mindanao.

In Kachin state in northeast Myanmar, for instance, there has been a long-standing violent conflict between Myanmar’s military (Tatmadaw) and the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) with its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army. After a 17-year ceasefire from 1994 – which many Kachin people experienced as a phase of exploitation by Myanmar’s ethnic Bamar majority and foreign companies and extractive industries – violence resumed in 2011 and has continued since. Given the absence of a ceasefire agreement, conflict monitoring in Kachin was based on a bilateral agreement between the government and the KIO to respect the human and humanitarian rights of civilians. NPM’s training for Kachin CCM volunteers consequently focused on the monitoring of rights violations by armed actors.

A recent study into these civilian monitoring networks concluded that:

despite failed ceasefires in Myanmar, the nurturing of civilian monitoring networks, that is, supporting civilian capacity, had a positive – albeit limited – impact on civilian protection. Monitors adapted knowledge from international ceasefire monitoring training to their reality on the ground and implemented civilian protection monitoring.

The authors also observed, however, that ‘conflict conditions seriously limited protection monitoring and posed grave security challenges to monitors and communities’. They concluded that

in conflict situations where armed actors show little sensitivity to civilian preferences and commitment to respecting human rights, the need for civilian protection is high while the protective potential of civilian monitoring is limited as long as armed actors’ incentives to better protect civilians remain weak.

At first sight, the 2021 military coup in Myanmar seems to support this conclusion. Ethnic armed conflicts around Myanmar’s borders have flared up again, and thousands of people – now including members of the Bamar ethnic majority, especially youth – have joined the armed struggle, in an uncanny resemblance to the 1988 uprising of students and Buddhist monks and its bloody aftermath, captured so grippingly in Pascal Khoo Thwe’s memoir, From the land of green ghosts. Yet, Myanmar has also seen large nonviolent resistance movements and actions, and there is evidence that civil society organisations and communities in several states have continued practising and adapting UCP under the new dictatorship, as another forthcoming ‘Creating Safer Space’ project will explore.

Possibilities and limits of UCP

An international intervention in Myanmar to protect civilians is politically unviable, even though nonviolent protesters have called on the international community to exercise its ‘Responsibility to Protect’. There has also been a further shrinking of the space for international organisations, including UCP work, to assist Myanmar’s citizens. In a situation like this, UCP knowledge, skills and strategies gained in more peaceful times enable civilians’ agency to self-protect.

In a group conversation held by one of the authors with volunteer CCMs in Kachin state in 2018, all CCMs claimed they had become monitors due to their experiences with violence, and because they wanted to do something. As one monitor noted, ‘I have seen the injustice, rape, killing and violence of the armed groups. I hope to reduce these problems by becoming a member of the CCMs.’ While CCMs knew that their involvement might put them at greater risk of being targeted, they accepted this risk in order to be able to act in the face of violence, rather than remain passive. This choice is not least based on the understanding that UCP strategies such as relationship-building, capacity enhancement and advocacy also work to protect the protectors. In a context where most international partners have had to withdraw or are greatly hampered in carrying out their work, community self-protection – however imperfect – may be one of the few possibilities for political action short of participating in conflict.

As in many other forms of intervention in armed conflict, UCP relies in part on the willingness of armed actors to consent to it. Without this minimum consent and the basic cooperation of armed actors, UCP practices are severely restricted. There have been cases, including in Mindanao, where international UCP practitioners had to withdraw because they were deliberately targeted, although this remains an exception (the fatality rate among armed peacekeepers is estimated to be 12 times higher than among UCP practitioners). It is for this reason that UCP practices centre around local actors and civil society organisations within conflict-affected communities, who are well placed to build understanding with armed actors about the role of UCP and its practitioners, making dialogue possible, and who can continue UCP work when outside actors cannot.

A related challenge is limited access to some conflict-affected areas, for example due to official access restrictions such as in Myanmar or Ethiopia, or high levels of violence, as in Syria at the height of the war. Even where UCP organisations have access, the state may revoke the visas of international practitioners at any time with little warning, as has been the case for some organisations working in Colombia. The primacy of local actors in UCP, however, means that civilian protection can be supported remotely through online training and advice, and the exit of international practitioners does not need to mean the end of UCP. While the international community of states has shown little appetite to intervene in Myanmar, either in the 2017 Rohingya crisis or the 2021 military coup, organisations such as Nonviolent Peaceforce Myanmar have continued to support civilians in self- and community protection.

Like any method of civilian protection, UCP faces challenges and obstacles – not least a lack of funding relative to other forms of externally supported peace interventions. But it also presents enormous possibilities and potential for supporting civilian protection efforts in contexts where, without it, they might not exist at all.

Acknowledgements

This article is a result of the work of the Network Plus ‘Creating Safer Space: Strengthening Civilian Protection Amidst Violent Conflict’, funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) [project reference: AH/T008024/1].

Louise Ridden is a PhD researcher working on UCP at Aberystwyth University and a research assistant with the Network Plus ‘Creating Safer Space’. 

Berit Bliesemann de Guevara is a professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University and Principal Investigator of the Network Plus ‘Creating Safer Space’.