 Good morning, everyone. On behalf of the United States Institute of Peace, we're very pleased to welcome you this morning's discussion on civil resistance and transitions. This is the third event in our series on people power, peace, and democracy. As mass protests continue to sweep the globe, from the racial reckoning in the United States to the brave demonstrations of civil resistance in Myanmar, this question of how to achieve lasting change through nonviolent action is pressing. It's also very much at the heart of USIP's work. Peace research shows three very important things. First, nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. Second, political transitions that are initiated through nonviolent action are three times as likely to result in peace and democracy. And thirdly, peace processes that are inclusive, especially of women, are more likely to last. Today, we brought together a panel of researchers and activists to discuss the impact of inclusion, dialogue, and negotiation on the path to sustainable and just peace. We're very pleased to introduce the panelists to you. First, Dr. Jonathan Picney, who is the senior researcher here at USIP. We're very pleased to welcome Dr. Veronique Doudouay, who is the senior advisor for the Burdock Foundation. Both of them will be briefing us on important and recent research that they've conducted. We're also very pleased to welcome Dr. Ramon Gabriel Olar. He is the Associate Professor in Political Science at Trinity College in Dublin. Dr. Ramon is going to be briefing us about his research on nonviolence, action, inclusive dialogue, negotiation, and how all of this can build trust in people in their own democracies and in governance. We're very pleased to have two activists with us, including activists and researchers, Zade Dusson, who will share his view on the transition into Indonesia 10 years after the 2011 uprising. Zade is with us right now from Tunis, and we're also pleased to introduce activist Zara Haider, who will share her views on the democratic transition in Sudan. Zara is in cartoon. We are still trying to connect with her. We hope that she'll be with us in just a few moments. We'll begin with the discussion among our panelists, and then we'll shift to questions from the audience. We encourage everyone to put their questions in the chat box below the video feed and to share them on social media using the hashtag people power for peace. We'd like to start with Jonathan and Veronique. Our first questions to you are about the research that you've been doing on nonviolent dialogue and negotiation and transitions. We'd be very pleased if you would share the results of that research with us and some of the conclusions that you draw. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, it's a real pleasure to be able to be here this morning and to be able to discuss some of this research that we've been doing. I'll introduce it a little bit and then turn things over to my colleague, Veronique, to go into a little bit more detail. So as you mentioned, there's this research finding out there showing that transitions initiated through nonviolent action tend to lead to more peace and democracy than transitions initiated through any other mechanism. But of course, there are a lot of exceptions to that. There's a lot of variation in that. And so we really wanted to understand how do we map that sort of uncertain road from nonviolent action successful, nonviolent action campaign, achieving their goals to the establishment of a new sustainable democracy. And we had a suspicion based on what we know about peace processes and inclusive dialogue that inclusion was going to be one really key factor that was going to explain that. So we looked at every political transition initiated through nonviolent action from the end of World War II until the present and collected data on all of the dialogue and negotiation processes that took place in those transitions. And what we found is quite striking. While dialogue on its own doesn't have any impact on future levels of democracy, when dialogue and negotiation processes are highly inclusive, when people from a diverse set of voices are at the table and when there are mechanisms in place to make that inclusion meaningful, then that leads to much higher levels of future democracy at the end of the transition. So that's sort of the 10,000-foot-high statistical view. And very neat, I think you can share some more about some of the specific cases that we've looked at as well. Great. So good morning. Good afternoon also to all of you from my side. I'm grateful to USIP for organizing this panel and especially for making it a joint event with my organization, the Barber Foundation, since the research was indeed conducted in close coordination between our respective teams following my fellowship at USIP a couple of years ago. And I would say that our two organizations share a strong commitment to bringing together the research and the practice communities of peacebuilding and nonviolent action. So I was very motivated working on this research together with Jonathan and we have partnered by making this a mixed method approach with Jonathan leading the statistical analysis and he may zoom in on some of the findings a bit later while I looked at the case study work. For this research we decided to look at three transitions that occurred in the last decade. So on the one hand the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, which happened in 2011, as well as the revolution of dignity or the Euromaiden revolution in Ukraine in 2014. All three transitions were precipitated by popular uprising with pro-democracy revolutionary youth and women I would say at the forefront of those movements. And in all three cases there were instances of transitional dialogue and negotiations but they varied significantly in terms of their inclusivity but also in terms of their outcomes on democratization and stability. So ranging I wouldn't say from emerging democracy in Tunisia to a relatively open but not very democratic society in Ukraine to a new autocracy in Egypt. So in all three cases we looked at the nature of dialogue and negotiation and we focused more particularly on the participation and the interaction of three key groups of actors. So incumbent elites or the former government aspiring country elites represented by opposition political parties and activists from non-violent action movement. What we found I would say across the case was that non-violent pro-democracy movements helped precipitate a political transition but then played rather secondary or minor role during the bargaining and the decision-making that takes place and that shapes the new rules of the game. Somehow they got sidelined by the establishment and by country elites who took center stage in those spaces. Of course there's a lot of variation across the cases so we found that Tunisia had the most inclusive transitional bodies and dialogue formats representing all major political forces such as villages and secular forces left and right old and new and revolutionary youth were not directly represented in all of those dialogue for us but they influenced their course a lot from the outside through sustained street action and also so thanks to the role of civil society as insider mediators such as the national dialogue court which I would say helped those dialogue formats to have a high level of revolutionary legitimacy by contrast in the cases of Egypt and Ukraine we found a number of factors that impeding inclusive dialogues ranging from actors I had to do with the nature of non-violent movements the heterogeneity of opposition parties and movements the lack of experience that they had in negotiation the lack of unified long-term vision for the country but also I would say the divide and rule strategies that the former elites used to prevent consensual dialogue and to format divisions among opposition groups the international committee also had a role to play either by its absence such as in the case of Egypt where we were struck by the absence of mediators or by I would say that dominance and the presence of big spoilers such as the role of Russia in Ukraine so at the end of the report we make a few takeaways especially for international peace building agencies such as for instance we asked peace building agencies not to approach dialogue or negotiation in non-violent led transitions in the same way that they would in a civil war by not looking at civil society and non-violent activists as as nice to have constituencies that will help to bring more sustainable peace but actually parties and they're alright they are part of the conflict constellation and they really need to be included in in those transition spaces that transitions need to be more than symbolic and I think we'll come back to that in a moment there needs to be a lot more training education and capacity building for grassroots activists in preparing them for effective participation in dialogue and negotiation practice there needs to also be a space for them to continue to put pressure from the street for those dialogue and negotiations to conclude successfully and finally there needs to be a lot of more emphasis on enabling female leaders of those movements to to be there and again I hope we'll be able to come back to this topic but the role of women was found to be preponderance in enabling transitions to be effective through their participation in dialogue and negotiation. Very nice Jonathan thank you very much it's very impressive research and it raises a number of extremely interesting points including the ones about inclusion that where inclusion is broad based where it's meaningful for the international community indicates that it's very important then clearly it's more effective but where elites are able to in a sense push out civil society and crack a deal between themselves it's also obvious that that is a less sustainable and a less enduring way of going forward one of the things that I think your research points to is how important it is that certain kinds of inclusion happen and Veronique you touched on this if you could say more about the kinds of inclusion that your research shows are very meaningful and impactful. Yes I can mention a few words about that and then and then pass it over to Veronique again so we were really we thought this was a really crucial point that oftentimes inclusion in dialogue and negotiation processes can be just this sort of tick the box exercise of you know someone from we have we have a woman here we have someone from civil society here we have someone from youth here and without sort of mechanisms in place to ensure that that inclusion that sort of that seat at the table is actually meaningful can actually have an impact and so in the statistical portion of our research we looked at things like what's the selection mechanism for what brings people to the table what are the decision-making mechanisms through which the dialogue and negotiation process comes to conclusions and then sort of what's what's the actual balance of power at the table you know who is able to sort of set agendas and who has to sort of take a back seat and it's really and and what we find is that almost none of these factors like none of these factors on their own have a really significant impact on future levels of democracy it's only when they are together when you have this full sort of suite of of mechanisms in place to ensure that to ensure that inclusion is is not just present but meaningful the one exception to this I will say that we are we were particularly interested in highlighting is the participation of women that even just sort of absent any of these other factors the participation of women in transitional dialogue and negotiation processes has a very significant positive impact on on future levels of democracy so in general you know it's crucial that sort of the inclusive nature of dialogue and negotiation processes needs to be broad it needs to involve lots of different aspects of the dialogue process but in particularly crucial important is this aspect of the of the participation of women very neat is there anything else you would like to add no I think what what you've said is very much reflected in the case that you work as well where we found I mean to take the maybe the negative examples of Egypt and Ukraine the few instances of attempted or aborted dialogue and negotiation that we found actually we found that the revolutionary youth were either represented by self-acquainted representatives or by traditional opposition parties to whom they lent themselves being represented but who then ended up having no direct mandate for them and lacking credibility with the protesters and which led to actually the outcomes of these deals being rejected by the streets because because of that so again it's not so much about who is there but also where does the mandate come from which yeah which relationship do they have with with the movements and in terms of balance of power I would stress the equal importance of having grassroots movements represented to also having old elites represented to make sure that they don't become spoilers down the road so that if they if they see that the that the transition the institutional sorry the transitional institutions and the dialogue process become too much dominated by the the new elites the country elites such as maybe the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt then those those those old elites might just interrupt the transition and make sure to reassert themselves and then all of the gains are lost very neat don that's very interesting if you allow me just a final question did your research look at the role of the the private sector either as a positive factor in many peace processes or a negative one the private sector wasn't uh wasn't an explicit focus of say like the statistical portion of the research we didn't sort of collect data specifically on that uh very neat I'm not sure if you have any uh insights or specific thoughts on the the role of the private sector uh in some of the cases that we looked at um well the the one example I can think of and maybe Zaid can also touch on that is in the in the national dialogue process in Tunisia how the civil society entities that were actually mediating that process also had a representative from the the business association which made sure that maybe the private sector would also feel represented and and and protected in any outcome that would come up out of the of the agreement but that's kind of the the one notable exception that that I can think of and I'm sure there would be yeah that would be another research piece in itself Jonathan Verney thank you very much for sharing the results of the very impressive research that you've undertaken uh Dr. Roman if we can turn to you we would like you to share with us this very interesting perspective that you brought to your research where you've been looking at uh the way in which citizens gain trust and democracy and in their governance arrangements if you could share with us how you've done the research and what your key findings are yes thank you very much for the questions and thank you very much for for having me here today to share uh my my research on how the justice processes non-violent resistance but also these negotiation events that both Jonathan and Verney have have investigated the fact how people perceive democracy right because in the in the literature on democratic survival and also democratic support we know the extent to which citizens and individuals support democracy is the glue that holds democracies together we know that regimes in which citizens are more supportive of democracy tend to survive longer and because they reject authoritarian alternatives because they reject anti-system parties or individuals and also they are more stand up and try to fight to keep to keep democracy right and if we look at democracy especially nascent democracies like it has been mentioned previously this nascent democracy as are in a big danger of diverting back to authoritarianism right why because elites have every incentive to keep their to try to keep as much as possible the their uh their access to state resources and as we saw in the case of Egypt when the opportunity arose elites were swift to return back to a version of authoritarianism that was even harsher than than the one than the one before right but when it comes to to democratic support then building democratic support in these new democracies very very hard because citizens that emerge from these autocracies they do have an idea of a democracy but very often they need to learn the norms associated with democratic politics so they need to build their trust and their support for democracy so it's not as it is right but when also when it comes to establish democracy is democratic is important because democratic support has been conceptualized as being against these uh this glue that pushes against any kind of backsliding to authoritarianism and just to give two examples of of how in democratic support affected democracies if you look for instance as at Venezuela who was seen as a as a modern democracy in Latin America in the first survey that the Pew Research Center ran there in 1995 so three to four years before before Hugo Chavez became president about over 45 percent of the respondents said that democracy won't solve their their problems and over 80 declared that a strong leader would be needed in order to solve the issues of that Venezuela was encountering at at the moment right so if we use that as a warning signal a few years later in hindsight uh Hugo Chavez became president through free and fair elections and then moved in transforming Venezuela into into an autocracy in the one that we know it is uh today right but also more close for instance in Europe in Poland Poland was seen as the golden child of emerging out of communism and becoming a consolidated democracies but starting in the mid 2000s more and more individuals declared that they were dissatisfied with democracies right and that led to so much disillusionment and so such a drop in electoral participation that in 2015 the current party that is in power was able to win the elections based on an anti-democratic and anti-system platform and we see a democratic backsliding in in Poland to in that emerge and was seen as the golden child of emerging out of communism. That's very interesting and if i understand well you're making a very interesting a very compelling argument that if in the peace processes itself people are learning about democratic norms this helps to educate everyone on how those norms should be exercised and is also a buffer that helps to prevent a black slide into authoritarianism that's bold statement is there more that you can say about it or more illustrations that you can give us? Yeah so actually I was interested and that's that's the part of the research that you have helped me look into is what is the effect of non-violent mobilization of how people perceive democracy or how do people feel about democracy in this regime that emerged out of non-violence right because we have a lot of emerging evidence from Jonathan's research but other people research as well that non-violent resistance is democratization but also democratic survival so my interest was in is this mechanism of democratic support the one that's driving this relationship of one of the possible explanations right and my expectation was that non-violent resistance is going to increase the extent to which people support democracy because participating in non-violent resistance and probably Zahid and Zahra will have more insights about they participate in non-violent resistance it's a risky business it's it's very dangerous and it's very hard for us to obtain democracy right so my expectation was that people are going to be more supportive of democracy if they had to work harder in a way to give it but I was wrong it actually statistical analysis shows that actually in regimes that emerge out of non-violence transitions people are actually less supportive of of the and I found that puzzling and I wanted to understand a bit better why so that's why I looked at these negotiations Jonathan and very unique mentioned and to see how that impacts or how any kind of consensus building during these transitions helps share shape democratic support and again there were some funding and some that were not so again holding a negotiation event during these transitions doesn't seem to affect in any shape or form or in any many democratic support but when we look at the characteristics of of these of these negotiation events we find some some findings that are very similar to the Jonathan and very unique mentioned so precisely I find that creation events that were dominated by the previous elites in which previous elites have had the upper hand and then the one in a way driving the negotiations actually for time leads to less democratic support again indicating that people react to this perceived injustice about who might have hijacked the the the transitions that they were they fight for for so long on the other hand the good news is that these negotiation events that were reached through what I call consensus so what I mean consensus is that the decisions during the during the negotiations were taken through majority decision in which small group had veto power where there was where they were negotiating over major political change or over the next quarter and they resulted in an agreement of all the participant participants in the negotiations those kind of negotiations are systematically associated with more with more democratic support so it's not all bad actually further indicates that it's a more complex story than I might have come or some people might have come with some prior prior expectations and what a points to Roman is that if you really want a peace process to result in a lasting solution you have to invest in the way the peace process itself works yes ignore that you do so at your peril it's very interesting work we're very pleased that Zahra Haider has been able to join us from cartoons are you are very welcome we introduced you earlier we're so pleased that you've been able to to come online with us we'd like now to to turn to Zahid and to talk about Tunisia Zahid both Jonathan and Veronique have referred to Tunisia Dr Roman also talked about this as a very important example of how nonviolent action as part of the transition has helped to propel your transition process in the very positive direction it's been um 11 years since the transition and we're very interested in your views on how the transition itself worked and what its impact has been thank you thank you to Jonathan Veronique Roman for the ideas that will help me go forward with the giving an idea about the 10 years of this transition transition of course 10 10 years is a long period of time to let's say sum up what happened in Tunisia or in any other country and what I can say is that it's obvious after 10 years that dialogue was the best and most efficient tool we had in Tunisia to solve crisis whether we're talking about political crisis or social crisis social movements around the country maybe the three best examples I would mention about dialogue being used as a tool to solve issues would be the first one in 2011 right after Ben Ali left the country and left the power we had this council the high authority to of protection of the revolution that gathered around the 100 activists political actors private sector representatives unions civil society organizations and led by Iyad Ben and this institution was the best idea ever in my opinion of course to help transition from an authoritarian regime to the national constituent assembly a year after without creating any void or any any disruption into the political process in Tunisia the second example was mentioned by earlier in 2013 2014 we've been through a major probably the biggest or deepest political crisis in Tunisia right before the constitution was adopted in January 2014 and we had this quartet of organizations mainly civil society basically the major union here in Tunisia Utica which is the business representatives association the Tunisian league of protection of human rights and the union of lawyers and the four of these institutions got a few years after the priest noble peace price for solving the crisis and finding a new path through this national dialogue in Tunisia and the third one I would mention would be not an event per se but a longer process which is the parliament I would be obvious for all of you that I would mention this but the people's representatives assembly the parliament in Tunisia is probably the best scene the best theater if I may say so in terms of dialogue because as Veronique said it gathers so many different political actors and if probably let's say 95 percent of the political specter or the political range of political opinions and ideas are represented at the parliament the five missing percent would be the clearly violent political actors which exist in Tunisia but are not represented at the parliament hopefully will never be represented but the 95 percent leading the parliament give Tunisia or give Tunisian citizens an idea of how ideas are conveyed how dialogue are done both in a successful way and in failures because the parliament is not cannot be seen only as a successful institution and sadly in 2021 I can say that what we're seeing at the parliament in Tunisia is an example of what a failing dialogue looks like I can go a lot of longer and deeper in this but I will leave that for the section Q&A section but what I might be interested in adding to this ideas is probably the obstacles we've met in Tunisia in terms of dialogue since the 10 past years and the main one and and that's the one I have a tendency to talk about the most is the political instability for the past 10 years in Tunisia we've had 10 different governments each government coming with a new team of ministers with a new team of appointed officials even in the region so it this political instability is impacting all level of administration so when we're dealing with social movements or NGOs or activists the biggest challenge is to keep a narrative with the administration with the Tunisian state because faces change a lot ideas behind those faces will obviously change a lot from an Islamist governor I would say in Ghassri or Janduba to one appointed by the old or the representatives of the old regime or people represented by or appointed by technocrats you will find yourself throughout years in front of different vis-à-vis and in front of different people that and there's no continuity let's say in this representation so the hardest part I think is to keep this political instability at the central or very national level and avoid it having it impacting local affairs the second thing and I'm not going to go into details with that is probably corruption dialogue and I'm this is what I'm going at the personal level digging deep into how corruption at many levels is jeopardizing dialogue it changes all the rules of the game it changes the the announced interests of each party or each vis-à-vis is different from the inner real or unofficial interest so as I told you this before the beginning of this webinar I I'm doing trainings or running trainings with USIP under a program called Synergizing Nonviolent Activism and Peacebuilding Snap with three different groups in Tunisia and what is coming out of these trainings the most let's say impressive or common point between all activists are these two points political instability that avoids or let's say creates a disruption into the faces or voices from the official part on one hand and corruption as jeopardizing dialogue on the other hand and this is mostly what Tunisia looks like today say thank you that was a very interesting analysis and and as you were speaking I think many of us were reflecting back on comments that Jonathan Vernaik and Ramon had made about how an inclusive process in many ways can act as a buffer against a backslide into authoritarianism do you think that Tunisia is a good example of that or not yet fully an example of that this is a tough question to answer I think what makes Jonathan and Vernaik if I'm not mistaken place Tunisia in the positive example is the comparison with other countries so yes if you compare Tunisia to Egypt I would go on that way but I do live in Tunisia and I do I am like 11 million other Tunisians victim of what the political scene in Tunisia looks like what the absence of a mature and sane dialogue looks like I'm a victim like 11 other million Tunisians of what extremist ideas look like so it's a tough question to answer but I think I did in a way thank you so much Zora we're delighted that you're able to join us from Com2 you're very welcome thank you very interested in your insights and your views and your analysis of this incredible transition that's taken place in your country yeah the scene now especially in Sudan is very confusing and it's very complicated really unfortunately there is a lot of institutional and political indisciplines unfortunately from all components and in all levels but anyway to talk about negotiation and dialogue in light of democratic transition we must distinguish between two negotiation existed in Sudan the first one is between the security committee that exists that formed by Al-Bashir himself in the end of his regime time and to manage the collapse in his regime and the revolution forces which none at that time freedom and change forces so this negotiation the aim of this negotiation is handling power from Al-Bashir regime to the revolution power but anyway the handling is not completely and completing very well or 100% for many reasons but that's why the second negotiation is very important which negotiation now between the government of Sudan with two parties the civilian and military parties arms movement who are in long war in civilian civil war in Sudan the cause of the importance of this negotiation because there is a lot of pointing agenda pushed by the army movement and also by the civilian art on the government to returning agenda of revolution and supporting democratic transition transition in Sudan fortunately there is agreement signed at the last months between the government and some of these movements are movement and still until the moment there is an negotiation between the parties of the army's movement which is SPLM led by Al-Chilu and Sudan liberation movement led by Abdel Wahid. The advantage of these two parties and even the the army parties is very important for the people inside Sudan is concerning completing the constitution document directions and the aesthetic of the army and also integrated of army and the mobilization of militias transition justice and something like secularism and a lot of things and all this we most of them we can call it is the street demands now for democracy transition in Sudan but anyway there is a lot of challenge also in Sudan actually big challenge in Sudan one of them lack of transparency between the revolution forces itself there is a mistrust gap it's extended every day every day more there is a lack of vision of how the transition should be we feel it from the government and for the parties of revolutions the political parties of revolution of course external intervention is and it's affecting a lot in Sudan regional conflict concerning Nile water which is new things now it's affecting a lot the situation in Sudan economic collab is the biggest one there is there is a lack even of agreement to clear economic recovery program also continuing conflict in many regions in Sudan conflict and war in several regions in Sudan and there is a big failure of military part to play the role in this area and also we feel like our our civilian governments is very weak to dealing with this session there is a lack of security even in here in Khartoum police is always playing the role of watching they didn't do their work very well so you can see the the the scenes now justice has been delayed until the moment people feel like Aljir will not go to them and it will not get his punish although he's in the gym but there is a lot of things is not happening you don't see any killer had his he's he's punished till the moment and there is a lot of corruption of course economic and even political economic so this is the scenes now in in Sudan and I will tell you that general sense for people in the street in Sudan that the security committee that exists by Al-Bashir is playing the role of the regime till the moment they protect their their benefits till the moment they're trying to put the challenges they're trying to even challenging the democratic transition till the moment and at the same time we feel like the government that that the sense of the street the government the civilian part of government is very weak and what it's very clear that there is a lot of conflict between the component of civilian government and even on the political umbrella of the revolution so this is the situation as to that I'm sorry thank you it's a very interesting set of factors that you're describing and and one of the things that that Dr. Roman shared with us is the research that he does often will focus on the relationship between the trust that citizens have in their government and whether or not the peace process delivering on the promises that it's been made and what's very striking about what you described is that that may not be happening in Sudan exactly the promises that have been made may in fact impact the way that Sudanese all across your country view their government and view the transition is there anything you'd like to share on that issue about the trust between people and the process itself actually if you you know if anybody just watch what it's going in this you know you know social media in Sudan it's it's clear that the relation between the street or the revolution power which we have a very you know very strong bodies which is neighborhoods committees it's not very organized movement you can say it's demand moving the street there's a hesitated relation between these powers with the government you know sometime it's going very well and sometime it's very bad and that's related of the what how can you uh what uh hamdouk government achieve in the ground for example when the relationship with the world we back to the world people are very happy and we go to street about that and say thank you hamdouk in the social media and other things but when we like yesterday there is um uh i mean about this of people found who killed in for two years by the militaries and there is no justice people are very angry and feel like this government will not reach justice at all so the relation is very very very uh hesitated and i think um our government still has the chance to return the support from the street if they are in my opinion and that's my opinion if they are um going to street and tell people what's going inside what happened inside the government uh what's happening from the military parties and people support of course civilian uh any part of our government zara thank you it's now time for questions and comments from the floor we're very pleased uh to to receive these if you can share them either on chat um or through the social media feed we are pleased to take those we have a question for zaid and zara and the question is how have youth movements changed in their role in influencing the policies and governance in tunisia and in sudan since the transition and there's a very specific follow-up question have these youth groups become more influential and connected or less so and why zaid um this is a question the question that is coming keep coming back in in tunisia let's say youth movements after uh 2011 uh let's say between 2011 and 2016 used to form around legal entities associations that was the best or seen as being the best way to uh move as a group to act legally to be represented officially but we've witnessed since let's say 2016 i can tell you why but uh 2016 2017 that um youth groups or social movements led by youth uh young activists uh tend to avoid uh getting into these uh official or institutionalized uh formats and prefer uh rather prefer uh dealing with public officials or public affairs or putting pressure on officials uh through unofficial uh ways or movements uh this is what i can say about the the forum but uh have they become more influential hard to say the political scene is uh quite uh disorganized uh but you have to know that let's say in an official way for to become uh a parliamentarian for example the law uh doesn't let doesn't let people uh under 23 years old become a parliamentarians and for the president of the republic in tunisia it's under 35 but for for the case of kaisa the president of tunisia elected in 2019 he was mostly pushed by a group of young activists and this is the best examples uh in my opinion of a group of young people uh uh coming together to push for a candidate in election so it might work i have only kaisa as an example to give but if it worked once it might work again in the future saura yeah there's three types of youths movement in sudan before the revolution and till the moment there is a political movement a political change movement uh this uh group of of movement are either disappear after revolution or be part of the government for example uh many of minister now and in the big uh position government are used and are activists before the revolution so using sudan we can say from the moment they participate in the government in different things uh but uh as i said we have different types of of movement use movement for example after revolution uh as i said before uh the neighborhood's committees is a youth movement now in the street and they are uh prefer to be far from government they're playing the role of watching and monitoring what the government doing they you see them uh if there is something wrong in the street and they demonstrate immediately there is also demands groups uh of i mean it's a youth movement and these groups are continuing continuing uh i mean raising their demands for the government before they're going and now after revolution they're continuing doing uh so uh i mean each group had their position on on situation but i think that the very interesting position is neighborhood's committees uh position uh and there is a lot of negotiation i mean dialogue now inside the neighborhood's committees in participating in parliament coming parliament are they will participate or not and how they participate because as you said as i said they are not very well organized to um have to let their participants in in the parliament and they accomplish uh any decision they have this power to to you know motivate the street and go to and demonstrate and continue and they there is a slogan called it's continue it's mean the revolution it's continue after two years for three years zahra say thank you for that jonathan we have a question for you uh there's a civilian resistance movement happening right now in the online how do you see its members being innovative and have these people learn lessons from other movements in the past that you can see thank you that's a really wonderful question um before i get into that i'll just say one quick thing regarding the the research that we've been discussing before i should have mentioned this before this is going to be this is forthcoming in a a report from us ip that should be coming out in the next uh in the next month or two um just for those of you who are who are looking for that um on the on the question of me and mar i have been just so so impressed over and over again by the courage um of the of the activists in me and mar by their by their innovation by their resilience in the face of i mean truly truly brutal repression um by the by the military in the aftermath of the february first coup a few particular avenues where i think the the movement in me and mar has been particularly uh innovative um tactical diversity uh that while the movement started out mostly doing you know what you might think of as traditional protests and demonstrations particularly as repression increased we've seen them move to other kinds of tactics that are less vulnerable to the kinds of sort of direct on the street repression that's happened from the military so whether that's a you know a silent stay at home strike where people are not going like not going into work but are staying in their houses all day as a form of protest or sort of splashing red paint around the cities to symbolize the the violent repression that's been directed towards them or utilizing sort of gender constructs in the in the context of me and mar by for instance you know hanging traditional women's clothing uh above their protests which in sort of uh sort of there's a superstition in me and mar that if a if a man passes under that then it will sort of sap his masculinity um and so using this as a as a means of sort of countering uh the the sort of attempts at repression by the by the military um and so i think there certainly is a lot of there's a lot of learning uh happening there in that movement uh there's a lot of innovation a lot of creativity um but just a truly sort of brutal and an implacable opponent um and so i think it's we're at a really crucial moment uh with uh with that movement where you know there's been kind of sustained repression for for over a month now increasingly sort of segments of the movement are are see are you know the people are saying that uh you know we don't see non-violence working so maybe we need to turn to a more uh to a more violent form of resistance uh which you know what what we know from the research is that those you know violent campaigns tend to be less successful and and indeed they tend to result in much more much higher levels of violence and repression throughout the like throughout the society as well so i think this is a really this is a really crucial moment both for people within Myanmar and for the the international community as well to be speaking very forcefully that violence against peaceful protesters is is unacceptable and that there really there needs to be a change in that in that country Jonathan thank you Robin we have a question for you elections are generally viewed as signposts of a strong democracy how have elections or electoral processes affected the trust factor that's so important for democracy that you've identified yeah that's uh that's a great question and actually that's that's something that i'm that i'm working on uh on a separate on a separate project in trying to understand again these how elections how or how transitions that occur through elections uh affect uh democratic democratic support and once again the results are a bit mixed and they're not as as straightforward as we expect but also that indicates the need that the need to understand better what's what's going on here right because first of all whether elections are associated with democratization is still a contentious contentious discussion there's still no consensus in in the literature as to whether elections by themselves relate to the democracy and we have findings and arguments on both over the aisle but in my own research that is currently working with with the University of Glasgow we look at how transitions that happen through elections affect uh affect democratic support and here we don't really find a consistent effect we find that under certain conditions just elect transitions that take place through elections do do increase uh democratic support but very often it's context-dependent and once again i think it goes back to this idea that the characteristics of the elections matter right so i think that ultimately it matters the extent to which the elections are being perceived as being free and fair the extent to which the elections are being perceived as a long alternative voices or allowing maybe opposition members uh to participate and actually to be elected and to be to voice to the main uh to the main process and to the main message that is being dictated by former elites or by by the regime so again i think that the quality of the election is the one that is going to affect how much people support democracy index to which they are they are willing to work with with the democracies and i think that in the cases where those elections do allow opposition voices and do allow civil society to participate we are more likely to see this perception of fairness and thereby support for for democracy thank you for one of our final questions um Jeremy you spoke very interestingly about the research that showed that the inclusion particularly of women was very significant in ensuring that a peace process was lasting and sustainable um we'd like you to say more about that can you explain why that seems to be the case and what it is about women's participation that ensures that the processes are more robust and substantial than otherwise yeah sure um well so i would say that on the role of women our research largely confirms what the civil war and country dissolution literature has found about the importance of including women at the negotiation table for sustainable results and so we found that in transitions that are born out of non-valued resistance and movements the the same basically this this finding is confirmed and this was a statistical finding and so you know like we did not go into the fine-grained analysis in the case studies as to why why that was it's especially because i would say that in the case studies we largely looked at cases where women failed to be adequately represented or if they were um there were there were women who were actually part of the elites i mean if we're thinking about you know there were lots of women in the Tunisian national dialogue there were lots of women in the elite bargains in in in Ukraine but these were women who were part of the traditional parties which i think helps also to bring some nuances you know we're not talking about just any women will change the results automatically and the fact that women are there doesn't really mean that they are representing civil society and that they are honestly progressive in their demands and so forth but i would say i mean some maybe some some thoughts as to why we found that that relation to be statistically significant um i would say on the one hand my hint is that the fact that women are there whether they are invited or allowed to participate or whether they asserted themselves to be there is an indication that that whoever is convening this dialogue is generally interested in taking a comprehensive approach to addressing the root causes of inequality and injustice and i would say also my hint is that when women are at the table there's going to be generally a higher chance that a progressive reform agenda will be advanced as opposed to an elite pact women will have more interest in making sure that the new constitution for instance will be granting rights to all segments of society and so forth and then maybe your last element that i that i would like to add is and that's kind of more based on anecdotal evidence i i spoke to a few women uh activists who had the chance to be involved in negotiation processes and i had the feeling that due to the quality of women they tended to have a higher propensity for playing breaching roles between opposing positions between uh within the movements or between movements at the constituencies between the movements and the state there's something about about them being women that that brings that that extra quality to them and again because it's anecdotal evidence i think there's a lot of more research that is needed on that and actually my organization the Bargo Foundation is conducting some work with you and women to understand women as insider mediators within pro-democracy movements to try and verify whether that's that's a that's actually true or if it's just a myth that we think that women you know honestly more uh more inclusive and and building more bridging than than their male counterparts very thank you so much for that we're at the end of our webinar today i hope that everyone joins me in thanking jonathan verinique roman zahra and zayin for joining us from tunas from cartoon from relin and from here in washington this is the third in our four part series on people power peace and democracy the fourth session will be on the 11th of may we hope all of you are able to join us we do have a recording of today's webinar and you can find it on usip.org slash events thank you everyone for being with us and a very big thank you to our panelists good morning