 Good morning. Welcome to the U.S. Institute of Peace. I'm the President of the U.S. Institute of Peace. I'm very happy to welcome you to this morning's important conversation about nonviolent civil resistance or people power and its role in peace building. And I know it'll be a great conversation because I've already started it with our three panelists and I expect this to be a very lively exchange. Today's panel is the first live event associated with USIP's new global campus online training and it's called Civil Resistance and the Dynamics of Nonviolent Movements. And the global campus of course is USIP's online learning platform which provides online trainings and host online events and it builds communities around peace and conflict transformation. And to date our global campus trainings have reached about 30,000 people around the world. So welcome to that community. And I'm very pleased to welcome today's panelists who will bring a lot of expertise in their own personal experience to this. Kerry Kennedy, Menal Omar, and Maria Steffen. Kerry Kennedy is the Associate General Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee which is a Quaker organization that supports local peace building and social justice work around the world. Menal Omar is our own USIP acting vice president for the Middle East and Africa Center and she has vast experience in both the policy and operational activities throughout the world and especially in her region. And Maria Steffen is a senior policy fellow also here at USIP and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council where she focuses on the role of nonviolent movements in transforming conflicts and advancing democratic development and has written extensively on the topic we're discussing today. So the conversation that we're having today and this global online training comes at a really critical time. I mean historically we have seen nonviolent resistance movements have been twice as successful as armed struggles even against very formidable foes and circumstances. We have seen empirically and Maria has written about the fact that they contribute, nonviolent resistance contributes both to civil peace and to democracy. So we've seen recently the Arab Spring, the Medan movement in Ukraine, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, vibrant anti-corruption movements in places like India and Kenya. They all highlight the powerful role of people power. These movements are challenging, unjust systems, they are challenging institutions and they are opening the door to conflict being transformative, not violent. But at the same time we're seeing a closing of civil space, a closing of the room for civil society to have that kind of a voice. With both governments and non-state actors clamping down on dissenters and prohibiting nonviolent assembly. So part of the conversation today will be on how to challenge this significant threat to international peace and security. How do we continue the power of people's voice at a time that we have the need greater than ever but also closing space. On July 6th the Global Campus launched the first chapter of this new training that explores the historical and theoretical foundations of civil resistance from ancient Greece to Gandhi's strategic application of civil resistance in South Africa and India to the modern struggles in Poland, Argentina, Philippines, Serbia and Tunisia. And we're joined today by many of our Global Campus training participants from around the world. They've been weighing in on the topic that we'll be exploring today. They've been weighing in all week so we have some of their comments already and they'll be feeding into today's discussion. We look forward friends online to hearing from you. So be at your keyboard. And for those who want more please go to usipglobalcampus.org to join the training which is free for a limited time and stay tuned for online training events and conversation. If you are following us on Twitter it's hashtag USIPGC. We've already released chapter one of civil resistance and the dynamics of nonviolent movements which begins with a short documentary featuring Congressman John Lewis speaking about the first time that he met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And of course our own country, the United States, is thanks to nonviolent civil resistance has gone through several very important historical transformations that enabled us to move into new stages both through civil rights, women's rights movement, the environmental movement. So this is salient as a global approach. So before we start the conversation, I'd like to invite you to watch a brief clip featuring Representative John Lewis who is a man who's been a moral compass on Capitol Hill. He's been a great friend to US Institute of Peace and he really embodies the transformative power that is in civil nonviolent resistance. So please turn your attention to the clip and then we'll begin the panel discussion. Nonviolent action is a method of struggle that ordinary people have discovered and experimented with throughout history. In 1959 in a small church basement in Nashville Tennessee, John Lewis started attending workshops on nonviolent action. He and all those who participated were introduced to the theory, history and strategy of civil resistance. These workshops became the training grounds for what would become a generation of nonviolent activists fighting for civil rights throughout the United States. In 1956, at the age of 16, some of my brothers and sisters and cousins went down to the Puppet Library in the little town of Troy, Alabama trying to get a library card, trying to check out some books. And we were told by the librarian that the library is for fights only, not for college. When I finished high school in May of 1957, I wanted to attend a little college called Troy State College. It is not known as Troy University. Submitted my application, my high school transcript. I never heard a word from the school. So I wrote a letter to Martin Luther King, Jr. I didn't tell my mother, my father, any of my sisters or brothers, any of my teachers. I told Dr. King I needed his help. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote me back and sent me around to a very harmless ticket and invited me to come to Montgomery to meet with him. I remember later as I had gone off to school to Tennessee, Dr. King heard that I was there. He got back in church and said, just if I was home for spring, great to come and see him. So I met him in March of 1948, by this time I'm 18 years old. And Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired me. He became my hero. But the young man by the name of Jim Lawson, a great advocate of the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence, started conducting these nonviolent workshops. So every Tuesday night at 6.30 p.m., a group of college students from Fish University, Tennessee State, American Baptist College, Vanderbilt University, Mahary Medical School, will go and study. We studied what Gandhi attempted to do or what he attempted to accomplish in South Africa, studied what he accomplished in India. We studied the role in civil disobedience. We studied the great religions of the world. We studied what Dr. King was all about. John Lewis went on to become the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a member of the United States Congress. Thank you. You know, Representative Lewis, it's always very inspiring to hear him and to hear about his journey. And I'm reminded, and we were talking just in advance of the panel, about how much work it is to successfully mount a nonviolent civil resistance campaign. And I have a number of questions for our panelists, but I'd love for them to also reflect on that and talk a little bit about how you prepare for a successful action or some nonviolent resistance because it looks like it, you know, just get a bunch of people and start walking down the street. It is a lot of work to do well. It takes extraordinary training and preparation, which is, I think, at the heartbeat of what this course is about. And I'd also like to start us off with a question about, you know, there's often a sense that some of the tactics of nonviolent resistance, the boycotts, the sit-ins, the demonstrations are at odds with the traditional tools of peace building, the mediation, the negotiation. And sometimes those are seen as being intention. So I'd love your thoughts on how you see those working together. Where are they intention and where do they complement each other? So Maria, maybe you can kick us off on those two pieces. Sure. Well, thanks very much, Nancy. And I'd like to join her in welcoming you all to this first live event as part of our brand new online course called Civil Resistance and the Dynamics of Nonviolent Movements. And I'd first like to acknowledge my global campus star colleagues who have been putting together the course and will be facilitating throughout the year. So Darren Cambridge is here in the front row, Althea Middleton-Detzner, and there's a number of other colleagues. Leah, so why don't you guys stand up? Just so folks know who you are. And I would say if people have any questions about how to get engaged in this pretty awesome multimedia online experience, these are the people to talk to after the event. So this is actually a great topic on how peace-building and nonviolent civil resistance intersect. I would say probably for too long, these communities have operated in slightly separate orbits to the detriment of both, something I was talking with Kerry about earlier today. And so I think where we're in complete lockstep is the idea that with the idea that conflict is often a very good thing. Violent conflict is generally a very bad thing. And you can actually transform conflicts using active nonviolent means. We should say at the out front that the approaches taken in traditional peace-building and nonviolent civil resistance tend to differ. But they're all part of an overarching conflict transformation approach and strategy. So as Nancy mentioned, whereas the traditional peace-building approach looks at mitigating and de-escalating conflicts using techniques like dialogue and mediation and problem-solving activities, nonviolent civil resistance actually intensifies conflict but in an attempt to shift power in a conflict so as to get to the point where you can have meaningful conflict resolution and negotiation. So civil resistance in a way ripens many conflicts for meaningful negotiation and conflict resolution. But so some are just taking a bit of the data and research side of things. So some of you will be familiar with the research that I've conducted with Dr. Erica Chenoweth who's based at the University of Denver that looked at the efficacy of nonviolent resistance compared to armed struggles. And so we looked at 323 campaigns from 1900 to 2006 and these were campaigns that had at least two people involved against dictatorships and foreign occupation and campaigns for territorial self-determination. And we held constant all the things you would think matter in terms of determining the outcome of these campaigns, whether it was GDP or the military might of the opponent, the regime, socioeconomic divisions in the society. And we found while holding these constant that the nonviolent resistance campaigns, so people using these tactics of boycott, strike, civil disobedience, non-cooperation outperformed their armed competitors, if you will, by a two to one ratio. So the nonviolent resistance succeeded about 54% of the time compared to 26% for violent campaigns. So that's a statistic that people are starting to cite when it comes to comparing violent, nonviolent. But the interesting part of that research that is directly, even more directly relevant to our conversation today, looks at what happens to the society after the struggle when it's either violent or nonviolent. So just to show, I promise, Kerry's gonna have the more provocative pictures, but I'll show you some charts and graphs and data. So just quickly this looks at the success rate over time and the fact that nonviolent resistance has been increasing in success over history. And so we look at how much more participation is involved in nonviolent movements compared to armed. The likelihood of security force, defection is much higher in nonviolent movements compared to armed. But so this is now these two points look at the effect of the resistance type on the society that follows. So we found a very strong positive correlation between nonviolent resistance movements and democratic consolidation after the transition happened. So the probability, according to our research, the probability that a country will be a democracy five years after a campaign ends is 57% amongst nonviolent movements, but less than 6% among successful violent campaigns. So that's a pretty striking finding. Not only that, we found that when looking at the relationship between resistance type and civil war recurrence, that as you can see, the likelihood of recurrence to civil war for violent campaigns is almost double compared to nonviolent campaigns. So there seems to be a very strong positive correlation between sort of nonviolent organizing and nonviolent resistance and the type of society that follows. And this just suggests that the general peace building and positive peace, meaning peace that incorporates elements of justice, rule of law, human rights, go very well together. But I would say it's not always the case that these nonviolent mass movements lead to reconciliation and post-conflict stability and that there's actually a tremendous amount we can learn from each other, meaning the peace building and conflict resolution world and the civil resistance. So I think this is a large part of our conversation today, sort of how practically they go together. And I think if there's one message that I would communicate at the beginning, is the idea that the peace building and the civil resistance approaches really should be seen as complementary and mutually reinforcing rather than at odds with each other. Maria, thank you and especially useful to have this data so that we're talking from some grounded place. And Carrie, how does AFSC see the connection of these two worlds? Yeah, thank you. I have to say at AFSC we were delighted by Maria's book because it validates what we've been seeing for 100 years. So it's nice to have that validation. Let me just ask, how many people are familiar with AFSC or Quakers in general? Good, yay, okay. So American Friends Service Committee is an organization that does peace building, civil resistance work, and what we call peacemaking. We're a Quaker organization that's been around for 100 years. We've been working to resist war, to resist slavery, to resist systemic oppression and injustice where we see it. Quakers, so many of you know Quakers, Quakers for 350 years have been willing to be imprisoned, to suffer, and to die for their beliefs, for their moral convictions and to fight for truth. And Alice Paul who led the women's suffrage movement was a Quaker who we lived up as a good example of this. So we think that they're absolutely symbiotic. You have to have civil resistance work, peacemaking, and peace building together. Sometimes our programs might focus on one or the other, we work best when there's elements of all three together in one strategy. So what we mean by Quaker peacemaking is convening. So we bring people together. We talk to all people on all sides of the issue. Quakers believe that there is light in everybody or there is God in everybody. So if you truly believe that there is God in everybody, you have to talk to everybody. You have to look, you have to talk to disaffected communities. You have to look for common ground. And that is a guiding principle for all of our work. So we bring people together. We negotiate. We also look for root causes, what we would call peace building. So we do programs like income generating activity. We in Guatemala, we do programs where we're looking for youth to reclaim public spaces that have been taken over by narco terrorists or violent gangs. So we're doing this mediating work. We're doing this peace building work. We also are supporting movements. So we know that sometimes people have to organize and we as an organization think that it is amazingly brave and courageous for both individuals and for organizations to have collective actions and to be out there fighting for their beliefs. One example that I want to lift up of when this works best. And this goes to Nancy's point about how long it takes. At AFSC, we were really instrumental in the anti-apartheid movement. We had an amazing staff member called Bill Sutherland. For 50 years, you know Bill. He is a famed figure. High zero? Five zero. For 50 years, he was working to promote, to put pressure on South Africa to lead the boycott and divestment movement. He was an unofficial ambassador for the United States, often working for American Friends Service Committee, but he also worked for other fake movements. And he spent half of his year in South Africa, half of the year in the United States. He linked the African movement to the African-American movement. So he brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Africa and built those relationships. He spoke. He brought the voices of South Africa to the United States. He protested. He witnessed. He published. He kept at it for 50 years. And this was through the auspices of AFSC. And that was a success. I was in Cape Town this past summer and met with Desmond Tutu. And Desmond Tutu said, Bill Sutherland is an example of the power and the potential for one individual to lead a collective movement. So this is the foundation of American Friends Service Committee. Today, we work, so we're about 100 years old, we work in 56 locations and we have the same goal. To speak out, speak truth to power, speak out against oppression when we say it, to transform systems of oppression and to seek social change. Now, just to go back to the how these all work together, so we have our three core methods of working. And you can bet in all of our 56 locations, every time we have a program initiative, we have a long-term strategy and we're looking at which approach, which method should we use. Sometimes we use all three, sometimes we prioritize one or two. There's always a tension and there always is a debate about which one to prioritize. But we know, based on our example of Bill Sutherland and our work in conflict zones for 100 years for AFSC and 100 years for Quakers, that when they work together and you can figure out a way to bring those communities together, you're going to have the most success. You're going to have a sustainable and effective movement. So, thanks to Maria for proving our point. Carrie, just before we move to now, one of our online members, Krypton, has weighed in with, he makes the point, from Tanzania, he makes the point that he sees peace-building and civil resistance as sequential. And that you should do peace-building, such as negotiation first, and then use civil resistance strategies only if the peace-building doesn't work. And he believes, and he cites Tanzania, that this prevents nonviolent practitioners from risking repression or arrest. I heard you say something different. I think in every situation, in every context, you have to come up with a strategy that works. I will, actually, I want to, this leads us to, I'll go to another example, but I do think that often they're happening at the same time. If we look at Egypt as an example, a lot of people point to Egypt as an example of a quick social movement. You know, under a month, a power has been transitioned, and I would say that it's never that simple. There are always years and decades of power-building, of small groups that are doing some small actions that are building the energy and the will for some kind of large movement. So I, but I would say, as a Quaker organization, if you can dialogue first to find the solution, absolutely dialogue. If you can do that without doing, if that works as a strategy, that would be the best tact to take. If that doesn't work, and I would say it's very rare that it works on its own without some kind of mobilization of pressure. Frederick Douglass is the one that says, one rarely concedes without a power, without a demand. So we have to, I think that we need to be doing it simultaneously, and sometimes one method is going to be prioritized. So like so many things, context matters. That's right. So moving to Menal, Menal, you are, you run for USIP programs in a very troubled region right now, where we've seen an upwelling of people power, and also some of the most difficult examples of closing of civil society space. Talk to us about that. I think that the idea of context matters, and what I want to do is kind of do the context within the Middle East, and particularly within the Arab Spring context, because I think that really is the people power that people are turning to. And I think Arab Spring is a very misleading term. We first saw a lot of the movement in Iran in 2009. We have movements in Turkey, and a lot of movement within Israeli civil society. So it goes way beyond the Arab world, but that time I think is very important. And I may be one of the last people in Washington that still sees the success of the Arab Spring. And also, I'll say. Is Menal alone? No. No. Good. Because I think part of the challenge with people power is we think that there is some powder. You add water and stern. We have stability and we have democracy. It's long processes. It's really building up. And Egypt is a great example. I mean, the Kafaya movement started in 2004. It was an organized political movement to challenge Mubarak. You have several human rights labor unions movements that started in Tunisia very early in 2000. And the question everyone had when they were traveling in the region wasn't when people were asking, could we predict the Arab Spring? The question for decades is how is this sustainable? How is it not exploded? And so I think people were anticipating, but yes, nobody actually predicted the spark. But I come to this word very much from a social justice lens. And so the tensions that you're talking about, peace-building and also the use of force are something that I'm consistently grappling with. And one of the things that I see kind of from a practitioner perspective and what I see on the ground a lot is people are wondering from social justice, people are wondering when they feel angry. I get this from youth a lot, but we're angry. And I think the answer is yes, you should be. Angry is okay. The challenge is angry equals violence. And so there's no other way of expression that anger other than violence. And I think that's a key tool that we try to bring. We say, okay, you can be angry. You can call for social justice, you should, but never be violent. And the statistics, this is a conversation Marie and I have been, is how we're convincing them. Because it's not just a matter of, you know, don't be violent because of religious tradition, don't be violent because of morals, humans. It really is pragmatic. And, you know, again, I come from a family that was entrenched in conflict. I never imagined the day would come when I would be in the squares and I was very fortunate. I was actually in Tahrir Square in the second rendition. I was in Yemen in Chang Square when the president fled and I was in Benghazi as Gaddafi was coming in when the NATO had decided to intervene. And so this was very live for me. It was very real. I have no doubt if we didn't intervene in NATO there would have been a mass massacre in Benghazi. And so, you know, you're grappling with this. How do you actually deal with choosing not to have violence? And Marie's arguments and something that I've been talking to her when I was in Denver is we have proof that it doesn't work. We have proof that there's a cycle and I think that's how you begin to grapple. And I think in addition to the question of social justice, there's also the question of responsibility to protect. How do we work as an international community to provide that protection but not necessarily have to turn to violence as our first means? What are the other tools in our toolbox? The other angle where I think is very difficult is how do you deal with the defectors with security officials? And again, I was in Chang Square in Yemen when soldiers were coming saying we don't want to be part of this. We don't want to be part of this army that's killing our people. We don't want to be part of the police force. What do you do with them? And you know, at the time that I was there, Chang Square was very clear. You're welcome but put your arms outside. You know, at one point in time, and I think this is a challenge in Syria, they have to embrace them and then you get the blurred lines of is this a nonviolent movement? Is it a violent movement? And once you blur those lines, it's a slippery slope but it's very real tensions that are hard to sort. Maria already mentioned intensifying the conflict and I think we can see how that at the front lines and the question of sequencing but what I want to bring is intensifying the conflict in transition. It's very difficult, even if you're committed to nonviolent, once you start a constitution process, once you start the nation building, for decades, we're telling people bullet over ballot box, I'm sorry, ballot box and we know it. We know what you meant. We know what you meant. But my point and maybe the 40 and slip is that it didn't work. People did go to the ballot box and so they're going back and saying, okay, the ballot box has failed us, elections has failed us, what else can we do? Oh, there's only violence and we need to come up with a second answer saying, okay, elections may fail because of timing, because of sequencing, don't give up on it, but in the interim, here are some other things. So I think we have to really provide very pragmatic answers for people who are on the ground who really want, I mean people, the reason why they're on the streets is they want to end violence, they want dignity, they want better life, but they're just failing to find the other ways to make it really happen for them and I think that's where this talk and this research is so crucial. I'd like to come back to the transition but before we do that, Manal and then Cary Murray, you may have thoughts as well. We heard Representative Lewis talk about the amount of work that Dr. King and others put into training and organizing and preparing. When you look at the movements that you experienced Manal in Yemen, in Egypt, what we saw happen in Syria, do you think they had that preparation? Did they have the kind of the opportunity to do the organizing that is so critical for these kinds of movements to have a chance of succeeding? Not enough. I think that you did have, again, if you look at the first renditions of Jechreir Square, you see where that training came into place, where kafayah stepped in with the Muslim Brotherhood. I mean they jumped in, they were not part of the spark. I think if you really look at the spark's labor unions, were probably the people who provided the mass numbers. And I think that that was where the disconnect, the nonviolent movements hadn't connected to what we call the street or the labor unions to provide the masses with those numbers. But I mean if you look at Jechreir Square, I mean it was, I mean the predominant, you had a few incidences, you had challenges, but the predominant was contained, and I think it was because of the discipline of the Brotherhood and the discipline of the kafayah movement. But not enough would be my short answer and I think that that's one of the challenges and again something we've been talking about, which is to provide people to get to the street is a different skill set from the people who are actually managing the street is a different skill set for those who will transition, is a different skill set for who will govern. And the Arab Spring was the same leadership with the exception of Tunisia, which really then led to a difficulty because you didn't have the diverse skill sets that were really needed to make it successful. And Egypt of course has a much longer history than a place like Syria. For sure. In that kind of organizing. That's correct, but I would say you know Tunisia is an interesting intersection because many Syrians obviously were inspired very much by Egypt and by Tunisia, but one of the lessons that perhaps they wrongly took from the Egyptian struggle in the Tunisian struggle was that this is a 25-day struggle. Yes. So you had kafayah and as Menel mentioned, this was a 2004 start date for this and you know the peak with the January 25 movement was in 2011, but you had this entire period of organizing, mobilizing, making mistakes, learning from mistakes. And so it was just an extended period of preparation, training and activity that of course led to the ouster of Mubarak. But I think in a place like Syria which has the deepest security apparatus in the region with the muhabrat to think that you would be able to sustain a mass mobilization or that it would succeed and just a matter of a few weeks or a few months was just, you know, maybe the wrong message to take from Egypt and from Tunisia. Yeah, and of course, Kerry's given us the 50-year example. Yeah, I mean I think that we need to move in the international community to taking the long view. It is very rarely this straight vertical line from conflict to civil resistance, peace-building, some kind of transfer of power, inclusive democracy, and yet we often expect that. Okay, well the movement has transferred power. There will now be democracy. You know, there's bumps, there's challenges, even in the United States. In our founding, this is not a smooth straight line and we need to give people space and tools and resources to try new things, to learn and to celebrate those small successes. I think we too often look for that big victory. This movement was a success and we want to point to that. This is the blueprint. Let's stay with that for a minute. Marie, you showed us the data of what happens after the likelihood of staying on a peaceful journey versus relapsing back into conflict within 10 years, which is a depressing statistic as we see countries on the spin cycle of conflict. How can we think about and train and help plan for taking a successful transition that has occurred through nonviolent means to remain on a positive trajectory forward? And I'd like to also bring forward, for those of you who are watching processes in the United States, the State Department and USA just released its Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, in which the pillars that it highlights are countering violent extremism, open democratic societies, inclusive economic growth, and climate change. And they see underneath all of these priorities the imperative of accountable democratic governance. How do we connect these pieces? That's a great question and it's actually, I think, a very positive development that our policy community here recognize the importance of democratic governance as underlying all of these other strategic goals. As you think about it, it's very hard to combat violent extremism and achieve equitable economic growth and combat climate change without participatory governance and without engaging citizens in decisions that affect their lives. So I think the relevance then of the nonviolent action, nonviolent resistance approach is how can we support groups in the field local agents of change that are mobilizing to challenge social, political and economic injustices and structures that are perpetuating grievances and that are making people very recruitable, let's say, for violent extremist actors. So how do we help people, you know, address these grievances and challenge the structural inequities and this idea of corruption? I mean, the QDDR mentions corruptions and accountability over 50 times and I think there's a reason for that because there's a whole body of literature out there that links corruption and protracted violence and so if you care about, you know, stopping these long-term violent conflicts, violent extremism, well, how do we think about addressing corruption? There are top-down institutional approaches, anti-corruption commissions and the like or we can think about how to support civic actors engage in strategic mobilization to put pressure on corrupt individuals, and practices and as you noted, this whole thing about nonviolent resistance is a skills-based enterprise so there are actually things we can do to empower civic actors to help them do their mobilization and resistance better in an attempt to challenge and reform these structures and institutions that frankly are protracting violence and providing a feeding ground for violent extremism. So we have a comment from one of our online members, Tori, who is commenting from Belgrade who makes the point that studies have shown that one of the reasons many young people, especially in the West, become radicalized and decide to join extremist groups like ISIS is because they crave that sense of community and belonging and can nonviolent social movements counter this trend by providing positive ways for young marginalized people to your point, Maria, to become involved with society and give them a sense of purpose and belonging. Manal, you alluded to that. Yeah, I think to a certain extent. I would unpack community because I think it's more people tend to, when they think community, start thinking about identity. I would say, again, going to the social justice, it's a matter of taking action. It's a matter of being heard. And I think that that's where we failed a lot of people in the West in countries that sense of being able to actually take action. And again, part of it is that anger. We don't know how to take action. We as an international community who believe in nonviolence or believe in certain core principles have not provided tangible action that they can take yet. I think that there's those elements and I think that that's where we're failing in the violent extremist groups are succeeding is that they're providing them quick action. They're providing them an answer. Part of that includes a community, but I think that's more of the discipline of the action versus just the sense of community because if you really look and unpack that sense of community, it's very rigid. It's very somewhat arguable or barric. And I don't think people are tight by that. They're tight by actually being able to do something and be heard on issues they care about. I just want to add to that. The QDDR has some really positive steps and has really positive recommendations. But I think one thing that we have to stress here is that in order for it really to be successful, that goal to go beyond the nation states and to include civil society and the activist community and national and faith-based leaders has to be incorporated. I mean, I know too often we're in a room in power centers like DC talking about CV strategy and talking about how youth are recruited in Syria without hearing from those in Syria or without hearing from those directly affected by the conflict. How do we bring in those voices and how do we make sure that we as leaders in peace-building movements always have the voice of those most deeply effective in our minds, in our hearts and in the solution? And I think that's a critical point. So the QDDR, if you package that, a lot of it is around this notion of fragility. Fragility being both the ineffectiveness of a state in providing services to its citizens, including security, coupled with illegitimacy in the eyes of its citizens. And so as we look at one of the principal challenges of enabling states to move or areas to move beyond fragility to avoid a descent into conflict, how can nonviolent resistance be a critical factor in that effort? And this goes to the how do you keep countries from going into conflict over and over again? How can the skills and the tools of nonviolent civil resistance be a prominent feature of that endeavor? Can I tell a good story here? Please do. Yeah, let me bring up a picture. So we've been working in Indonesia for quite some time and you know in Indonesia there was a civil resistance movement that ended the regime of Saharto and really there is a long history of activism and religious freedom. Recently, unfortunately, we're seeing a growth in some extreme religious intolerance in Indonesia. We're working with the activist community who has been active for 40 years. So this is again going back to the long view. We try to be deeply rooted in a community, work with the people that have been doing this brave hard work every day, day in and day out for years. So this is an example of people that are going nationwide to do these peace torch movements and in some communities extreme groups are closing down houses of worship and this is happening of all faiths. It's not one faith to another. There's only a small number of faiths that are authorized to operate in Indonesia and so we're supporting this movement to go out and to proudly say we support pluralism and to help the activist community be more visible and amplify their voice in the international community. So I just want to bring that back to say that people are doing this work every day and I think it's up to us to connect it to amplify it but often behind the scenes to lift them up. I would say the World Bank actually just hosted a couple months ago a whole session on state fragility social accountability and people power. Because they're making a link too that engaging citizens in nonviolent mobilization to enhance state accountability to improve their ability to provide services is directly linked to challenging the state fragility. So some of these big organizations in town are getting a link between resistance, nonviolent organizing and actually state strengthening. So interestingly, Kamara who is making a comment from Sierra Leone brings forward the example that in Sierra Leone after the 1990-2002 very very bloody conflict in Sierra Leone that peace building processes were developed and employed across the country and in fact some of the institutions like UNDP and UK and US partners worked with the civil resistance movement and civil society actors on the ground to carry out the truth and reconciliation process in Sierra Leone which was a piece of that. I know this is something that you and your team have taken a long look at in terms of what parts of these processes can be most successful. And it goes to the point of if you're committed to nonviolence that has to happen after as well because there may be a nonviolent movement and then you have a transition and particularly for the transitional justice and accountability element there can be a very strong desire to kind of go back to the default of particularly death penalty holding trials without necessarily strong due process and I think that what we've seen is countries that have skipped a truth and reconciliation and it doesn't have to be like the truth commission some type of process where you're dealing with transitional justice when you skip that process and I think Iraq is a good example where there's the temptation of saying we don't know how to handle this it's either really quick de-bathification law, Libya did the same mistake of an isolation law or they completely go to nation building without dealing with the reconciliation and accountability it's almost like every few years a reset button is hit and then they have to have the same conversation over and you've seen this for over a decade in Iraq this temptation to move forward without really dealing with the past is necessarily going to gain the spoilers the spoilers will never gain but what you lose is those people who are dedicated to you to begin with those people who are really working for a transition in the belief that justice and accountability would take place one day and after a decade when they no longer see that happen you may actually lose that group which I would say is the majority to more violent means who are then seeking justice and accountability so it's a very crucial part unfortunately because of the nation building process because of our lack of long-term viewpoint a lot of times the international community will push this because we want to see a constitution in a year we want to see a parliament in a year these are our indicators of success elections, elections it's the magic wand of legitimacy so let's do it real quick that magic bullet a lot of times the international community actually pushes countries who may have they always will have challenges getting their public and I think in terms of the fragility there's a huge difference between legitimacy and authoritarian regime there's a lack of capacity a lot of countries in transition just do not have the capacity to provide they've inherited all of this look at Tunisia, look at Iran any country that you look at they've inherited all these challenges and so they're not going to be able to deal and I think that's where the question of nonviolent movement comes in because if you're having people in the streets nonviolent it does create a tension for countries in transition who may have very good will to try and do this and the second minister of justice in the transitional government at the time you know who knows what the government is now but at the time was a huge human rights activist I mean this was a man who had really dedicated himself as a lawyer to human rights for decades under under the most difficult regimes and suddenly he was in power and I remember him telling me he was saying I never thought the day would come where now I'm frustrated with my colleagues and my friends because they're just not giving me time how am I supposed to deal with the tensions provide better services when I don't even know how many prisons exist you know Gaddafi had so many hidden prisons and so that tension I think is where nonviolent movements can really decide is it an advocacy where you're holding people accountable or what I call collaborative advocacy where you may actually have a partner you still hold them accountable but in ways where rather than dealing with them as the enemy great example is police like they don't have to be the enemy how can you work with them through our justice and security dialogue where they're being held accountable they need to be informed but they're not the enemy they're not the face of the state that the way they were in the past but fortunately there's more to nonviolent resistance than just protests and demonstrations and boycotts so in you know situations like this during you know tenuous transitions often some of the most effective nonviolent organizing is doing things like social audits and community monitoring and parallel structures and institutions so these less confrontational but nevertheless collective action tactics that can actually you know help empower these processes vice purely being antagonist there's a time for antagonism there's a time for pressure and then there's a time for engagement a lot there's that part of civil resistance that's also about engagement that gets forgotten about so I think Maria's just given a preview of the online course the kinds of skills the skills the tactics the strategies that are critical for thinking through how to mount these so I have seen a lot of heads nodding and I know there are a lot of people in the audience who have their personal experience and expertise so I want to open it up for questions and comments both from our audience here at USIP as well as our online listeners and Michael you get the first question Michael Lund a long time USIP Hi Michael now a senior associate at management systems international well thanks for this very rich and integrative and interactive conversation and focus I was a little surprised to see in the billing for the program the juxtaposition of what was called traditional peace building apparently that means mediation dialogue now that I hear versus civil resistance particularly the nonviolent form it seems to me that concept of peace building has really mushroomed and in some ways become out of control in the sense that it includes every single good thing that one can imagine or want for a society although I like the image of out of control peacemakes but let me try to bring a little more control back to it so in addition to so the article that you wrote and this conversation has brought out strategic advantages of nonviolent very thoughtful very well informed very well prepared citizen mobilization but I think it's equally important if not perhaps even more important given the enthusiasm that we sort of get into on this subject to point out what the research literature suggests are some of the necessary conditions that make for these methods to have success and to have the long term results of stable democracy as against the return of a authoritarian ruler or even a failed state I think Libya fairly is called that and some of the literature suggests things like and these have been alluded to by several people already a relatively non politicized professional military a moderate opposition set of parties that can take up the cause and do something with it after the popular uprisings some element of economic capacity or ability to to grow the economy as Nancy mentioned a functioning state that can actually respond actually has the capacity to do something in response to these grievances a regime that has what is called a selectorate as against just the electorate a group of elites that have a vested interest in preserving stability and have some clout within the regime who can engage in bargaining in order to figure out what's the next step so it's not simply a matter of promoting bottom up approaches but a kind of coherent comprehensive approach to linking peace building and mobilization has to involve top down approaches and elite centered approaches too. I think there's a tendency to sort of demonize the regimes nasty dictators and of course we've got good examples of them but there's things that can be done before the revolution not just during the revolution and of course as have been mentioned after the revolution that I think are as important entry points for the peace building community as this particular one as important as this is to bring out. Thanks. Thank you Michael. That was very helpful and I know Manal was referring to that in terms of the dialogue with the police for example. Maria did you want to respond to this? Well just the data so you mentioned some of these structural conditions that one would think actually are serious impediments to the emergence and success of nonviolent movements the data actually doesn't show that so the ones that you listed the presence of these opposition political parties, economic capacity so actually we tested those variables in the dataset and the nonpo dataset Erica Chenoweth and I and we didn't find that those factors prevented the emergence or success of movements and so but where I will agree with you because structures do matter and actually how security forces are configured and whether they're sectarian base or broad base that matters in terms of the likelihood of being able to co-op them that matters in terms of whether they're going to defect that doesn't mean nonviolent resistance can't work but it might mean well maybe we should focus on the economic elites or the you know some other key pillars of support so that part certainly matters but I agree with you and I think for the transition these factors are critical economic development the presence of political parties that can transform the momentum of opposition energy into a political transition so I would agree with that and then fundamentally I agree with your statement about the need for a coherent peace building approach that brings these various elements together Mina? Just to exemplify I mean again the transition point I think in Egypt you had a lot of the work that took place beforehand I mean 2004 is just I can give you decades and decades of movements inside Egypt one of the strongest civil societies in the region they were training Iraqis and others for a very long time so Egypt is in terms of the prep then they seize the moment that they could you know taking on from Tunisia and took that opportunity but that lack of transition may have put them back decades you know that that inability to have the elements that you talked about in the transition phase really has led Egypt to a place where they've not only gone back to pre-revolution days but they may have gone back to 80s you know 70s in terms of their civil liberties and their relationship with the government and so I think that's why that planning and that skill set and I keep pointing to Maria because we're saying how do we do this how do we actually get where you get that momentum and that movement but then you take that responsibility and shift it to the new group because I don't think that you can have the same people leading each of the phases it's what I think is really making the Arab Spring unfold is that you had those same leaderships who just you know no one has that depth of skill set you need to be able to push it to the next group to the next team Well and I think Michael a lot of your conditions really relate to that sense of capacity and what happens when you're trying to effect a transition in a place like Central Africa Republic for example where there's just no very very little capacity and then it becomes a function of the international community's ability and willingness to step in as proxy capacity for some period of time Can I have one block to this too? Before when I told you there's things that can be done that can lead to constructive engagement like the use of South Africa that can make a difference rather than waiting for some sort of economic crisis to take about And I think Kerry wants a comment on that I want to add to that so one good example we support work in Myanmar so Myanmar is pretty well known is that in the 80s they had a repressive a violent reaction to civil resistance and it's been a pretty close state it's opening up but it's restricted and we're supporting a foundation and this one activist Min Tso who recently won the goldman environmental prize some of you may know it's very prestigious it's a great word he worked within this restrictive repressive society to make a really big change so he saw a dam being built on the Irawati river he calls the Irawati river the home and the lifeblood of the kitchen people his people he saw this happening he was an environmental journalist he took pictures he recruited art galleries to depict what could happen what could be the impacts of this dam they were going to bring in a Chinese developer who was planning a 6000 megawatt hydro dam which would have displaced 18,000 kitchen people it would have flooded its heartland and it would have caused impacts for millions of people so he very bravely used arts, used photography and mobilized a national movement and he did this quietly and he worked within the space that was allowed still bravely but not what you might not what you might think as a movement in the United States and he changed they also were talking to the regime at the same time they were talking to elites and they stopped the construction of this dam so those small steps I think are what's critical for radical change and we have to celebrate those small community wins those policy interventions at the same time while we're dialoguing and I think that's our we hope when AFSC is at its best that's what we're doing okay we're going to take a few more oh we have some online comments yeah so we have one question from Twitter from Lee Smithie who's a professor of sociology and peace and conflict at Swarthmore and he asked the panelists do you see any implications of violent versus nonviolent struggle for the post-conflict peace building so he supposes that it makes a big difference but he wants to know what you all think yeah so that's where the data comes in about actually the violent resistance of campaigns that succeed generally do not usher in democratic countries or democratic consolidation and there's a pretty high chance that these countries will go back into civil war within 10 years at the end so there definitely is a link between how people fight and the type of society that that follows for sure and I would just say and again from the countries that I've mentioned you saw a real grapple of understanding power and leadership is through force and so it was almost a demand from the people so in the transition you know my favorite example is Egypt the first ministry of interior after the transition was so collaborative and so cooperative and met with civil society almost weekly that he became known among the people as the romantic minister, Romancey right and they wanted someone stronger how is our ministry of interior so nice how can you deal with security and so they ended up transitioning him to a much harsher and then those same people saying oh please bring back the Romancey we regret that comment and so it is this battle like the people themselves for such a long time under authoritarian regime the psychological and traumatic experience has taught them that force and leadership are the same it's the same thing as anger and violence and I think that that's really the challenge and one of the things that when we're talking about nation building or construction we don't realize how much we have to deconstruct before we can build and I think that's a big challenge we would have the same thing we have to focus on reconciliation and we have to look at alternatives to violence so people we have to debunk the myth that a violent movement or a violent intervention is quick and that it's fast and it's affected and we have to say it's messy and there's long term repercussions there's healing within a community that has to happen for you to have sustainable peace if violence was used as a tool for change USIP has been in a stand for about a decade and when I was there recently I met with a group of university students and a young woman who's studying law which is an important evolution by itself noted that her country has been at war for 36 years and that violence has permeated every aspect of society and they need the kind of skills building that helps the smallest of conflict be resolved peacefully because right now the default is to violence that when you have grown up in that kind of environment so let's take a few questions we have a lot of people so I'm going to take three in a row one, two and three but we need our microphones so this gentleman right here and then give the second microphone over to this gentleman go ahead. Hi thanks this is to all of you but possibly directly to you Manal I'm curious what the wide public perception of the philosophy of non-violence is around the world I have some idea what it is here in the USA and not necessarily so great you know I think there's a lot of backlash to the idea but I'd love to know what it's like not among activists not among people who are involved but you know is it taught in schools are there public figures who are popular thank you. That's a nice softball question for the online course second yeah so my name is Eli McCarthy at Georgetown University my question is about God used to make this claim that there was an obstructive program and a constructive program to non-violence so the obstructive was like boycott strikes non-cooperation right constructive was more social uplift the poor and marginalized and kind of building unity one of the things he said was when violence would become part of the non-violent resistance we got to a certain point that he would call off the non-violent resistance movement and lean them towards more constructive program activity so I guess I'm wondering based on your experience what you think of that that sort of approach because it seems to have a lot of relevance for what we've been seeing recently okay we'll take one more right here hi I'm Marion I'm transitioning to do a masters in Georgetown but I was previously in Northern Iraq working a lot on this stuff and I just I'm gonna pose a question that a lot of the youth are posing to us there so we have a lot of Arabs and Kurds Sonisha and I was working within a university but setting up a thing tank with a lot of students and their question they want to do non-violent resistance work but they feel like the nature of the conflicts in the Middle East has made the traditional methods almost impossible they say the fact that the biggest threats are non-state actors that we are so divided by sectarianism by tribalism separatist movements we don't even know who to be angry at anymore because there's so many we're a proxies for other countries so how do we what would you answer to one of these Arab or Kurdish students who say who do we who do we shout out to and who do we shout the truth to and try to bring change what do we do all great questions Manal do you want to start us off? sure I'll start backward so the question in terms of youth I need to give a shout out to our youth generation change fellows who are flocking to your class because they're so eager for that answer I'm getting that question all the time and this is from Uganda to Nigeria to Morocco to Jordan I mean just these youth saying we really want to believe you we're just not sure that it's going to affect change and we really need change and I think that it's a real hard question I would say because of the elements you described it's more important than ever what I've learned myself and you know I tend to be a social justice person I don't you know I believe that there are times when you need intervention and that can look like different forms but what I've seen just pragmatically is that the nonviolent means is the most sustainable and lead to real change I grew up in a family like I said of conflict and you know from a very young age I was told you know don't feel comfortable as a South Carolina your job is to get back to Palestine that is your job by all means necessary to find your way home and everyone was always giving me what I was doing that and I realized it's just not working more and more deaths and that's kind of pushed me from a very young age like when I was in high school to say what else and I think that's what everyone that are asking you that are asking you they're asking that question what else I know what my job is but I want to find a real way of doing that and I think that the element of breaking down sectarianism breaking down this what are the things that I've learned is that I am really a global citizen that there is no real boundary to put me in and help South Carolina all in one so I think that type of messaging to youth can be very empowering but you've got to give them the tools it can't just be a philosophy you and this is where your data is so important this is where the experience as you're talking about Indonesia is invaluable for me that I'm actually going we're sharing this with Generation Change with our facilitators in the region we're saying this isn't just a philosophy and theory here are the numbers here are the examples of where it's worked and that's where I think is very empowering and it ties a little bit to your question of non-violence there's a real desire to believe there's a thirst to believe but it's still seen as idealistic it's what the one word that I'm often described when I travel is you're so cute so idealistic right you know and they want to pat me on the head we want to believe you and these are top I think that's the heart of your question yes I sat with top religious leaders and you know the absolute highest in the region with top tribal leaders and they will tell me I remember in Libya some of them saying we want to believe you now the good news is after they the there's always been challenges in terms of implementing kind of the straight hard core security constitution procedures and this literally has happened where was that girl who kept talking about reconciliation let's bring her back and that is how I became a member of the Libya stabilization team I was the only non-Libyan the only international actor that was part of the Libya stabilization team because in Benghazi I kept pushing them and saying you think it's easy once you transition remember this this and this and they came back and said you know bring that girl back let's hear what she had to say and so I think that there are people who want to hear it but if you're not providing the data and the examples it will continue to fall flat I would say that the the biggest challenge is I would say right you know one of the biggest challenges so many challenges but the biggest challenges we continue to ignore the trauma and I think that it's I feel is a missing piece until we can so that we're not and you know there's a great line you know trauma that's not transformed is transferred and so you see this where people who are actually fighting for liberties are then actually turning out to be the oppressors in a decade and so I think it's a missing piece not from a healing mental health I think that there's great work out there but I think we need to how to figure out how do we deal with trauma national dialogue how do we deal with it when we're writing the Constitution because you you're on a time like you instantly and I think that there are some ways that you can actually incorporate it in the pragmatic peace building at most of these point the sectors have been different you have the mental healing you have the psychological work you know psychological work on the ground but you haven't incorporated an actual dialogue you know they think to effect that to the effect that I think it could be really powerful and at every level we see this in South Sudan where the leadership reverted to the violence they know and trauma they've experienced and launched their country right after independence right back into conflict and violence but also in terms of the youth because it is a tough one especially with these non-state actors you know what can you do with nonviolent organization mobilization resistance when you're in Iraq and Syria and you're facing not just obviously government regime elements but ISIS and other and I think you know there's not a tremendous amount of research done on this topic but there is starting to be more and more on sort of strategies of nonviolent mobilizing even against these non-state actors so you know in places like the Philippines and Colombia the creation of peace zones and even in parts of in Mosul in Iraq people actually have mobilized effectively to prevent like the destruction of mosques and in Syria and Raqqa there have been some pretty interesting examples where women led mobilizations pressure against ISIS has led to the release of some political prisoners and hostages these are sort of in the small win category it's not going to effectively eliminate these elements but there is organization intact as you can do and the fundamental question from a civil resistance perspective is what are the what are these actors relying on to stay in power so where are their economic sources of power moral sources of power which is why online satire is actually super helpful in terms of challenging ISIS so you know moral sources are political economic and what can ordinary people do to sever in an organized way without putting themselves at tremendous risk so probably wouldn't be organizing you know street protests every day against ISIS that may not be the best tactic but there are lots of things people can do to sort of disengage and it also relates to Eli's point about the constructive program because a lot of civil resistance scholars focus on resilience so resilience is a very big term in the literature what can people do in cases of repression and here we're talking about state repression non-state repression just and to almost detach from systems of repression so whether it's creating underground trauma centers education centers schools medical facilities just to keep those social bonds strengthening people organized in a way this in many places where it's profound repression in all of these armed actors it may be the most effective form of nonviolent organizing and collective action that there is yeah I would add to that that we would need if I just want to show this picture that we need to connect the different so I think this is a picture of Palestine so we're working in Israel and Palestine with nonviolent movements and one thing that we try to do with our dialogue and exchange program is link people that are doing very small acts of peace within Syria like doing trying to be a journalist keeping a bakery open two people in Somalia that are doing similar work two people in Palestine so they can learn from each other and be inspired I think we do have to go back to the international community needs to emphasize the allocation of resources to a serious investment in peace so we can't say that we can't always look at the militarized framework as the only one that is right and that is valid and it's on us the people that are in the field to come up with those alternatives and to put them out there and to speak about them as loudly as possible so that they are taken seriously and I think that's one piece that we're lacking right now and the more that we can connect with the people that are in the communities doing this fight every single day because it's happening even if people are disenfranchised even if they're not organized you can bet in every single oppressed community somebody is organizing on some small scale and how do we help to amplify those efforts it's it's very much connected to this long game concept and the resilience were required at a personal level to maintain the long game I know we have a lot of questions sorry let's go over to this side and start in the back yes Hi my name is I'm from Liberia but I'm here doing my graduate work at the University of Notre Dame and I just started my internship at the World Bank in Liberia in terms of my experience I did work with the women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace where we did protest against the war and based on my own experience and now I'm doing a research in Colombia and I see that it's quite complex where we see that civil resistance or civil disorder has been violent over so many years there has been so many different peace talks and sometimes it's like you don't know where things are heading what would you say are the prospects for peace building and non-violence campaign generally when it comes to Colombia I don't specifically have expertise in Colombia but I want to say I've spent many years in Liberia and Liberia and the women of Liberia are to me a good example of how women that formed the backbone of the civil resistance movement then made a difference in an election and then were integrated in the infrastructure and the design of the country so you saw the truth and reconciliation bring in a gender unit you saw rape being criminalized and coming up with special victims units now all of these are not without its problems and its resources but I have to say there's a lot to learn from Liberia and maybe we should organize some kind of tour where we bring Liberian activists to Colombia and so this is the kind of exchange we should be looking at what worked what was successful and how do we network each other so USIP has been working to support an inclusive peace process in Colombia for a number of years and I invite you to visit our website to look at a lot of the meetings and we can connect you with Ginny Bouvier here at our institute one of the key pieces is having an inclusive peace process and so the effort has been to how do you bring into that dialogues the women some of the civil society actors and ensure that they are at the table as the piece is being negotiated that's it is complicated but that is one of the lessons that I think we've learned not just from Liberia but from a number of places there's actually data out there now empirical data that shows that the inclusion of civil society in peace process dramatically increases their success rate and I can't, Desiree or Robert I think excellent okay few more so one more from the online course Marlo from the Netherlands she says in our world today are people becoming less and less willing to buy into the authoritarian bargain being sort of the willingness to give up certain aspects of democracy in exchange for maybe stability or security or does she says or are we seeing a growing discontent as many governments seem to struggle with providing that basic security or safety I think this goes to the heart of the fragility the legitimacy and effectiveness because it's part of the state's responsibility to provide security but in a way that is also legitimate in the eyes of its citizens I would say it depends on the context when it works it works you have several monarchies in the regime where people are pretty loyal you have the other people who don't have a long term lens they miss some of the days of the authoritarian regime they crave the stability so it really depends it depends on the context and I wouldn't say people are completely ready to give up the social contract in terms of whether we provide this and then we'll provide the citizenship rights I do think that what we're seeing rather than the form of government is really a challenge to what states could look like I think that's being challenged I think that what else is being challenged is what does citizenship mean the definition of citizenship which then is entrenched in the questions of identity which is a little bit what you were talking about all the different tribal and religious sectarian which is begin to emerge and what it could look like it is now a stronger burden of proof on state to show that they need to exist do you actually need states you need borders Islamic state has kind of thrown out the idea of borders like we can just declare this is a Western concept we can actually declare the territory we want so I think that's more a question is what would states look like how can they show that they're actually valuable and then what is the new concept of citizenship and how tight is it to identity back over to this side very back and we're starting to run out of time so we're going to try to keep it short so people can get their voices in okay thank you I've enjoyed this conversation this the main one of the main points that I heard here was about the integration of these processes and practices which to me seems to make good sense and it's a direction that we've been moving in for quite some time and comprehensive is difficult to bring to reality and make real but also really important between different practices I want to ask you a question on the other side of the coin do you because I think we can learn from the tensions do you see tensions in the way that people who are working professionally and also on the ground we're coming more from a civil resistance perspective and those that are doing these other forms of peace building work do you see tensions in the professional cultures in the methodologies in the way people do it and what do you think we can learn from those tensions in terms of maybe having productive conversations and just as a kind of sub question personal interest I'm interested also in in relation to institutions of power you know so some are directly challenging authority and others are needing to work in more integrated frameworks with donor governments and others so there's some difference there as well thank you yeah let's do let's do another question right there this gentleman in the middle right yeah sorry I don't know names John Rothenberg I I'm an Afghanistan specialist in Afghanistan and in other places that I look at the violent groups systematically destroy traditional means of conflict resolution such as the Shuras I've seen programs like the national solidarity program in Afghanistan where they try to reestablish those kind of mechanisms and I've seen other programs that are based more on newer ideas what I think is positive in both I was wondering what you up there think about it about traditional forms of mediation okay couple of questions I can say quickly on the about the professional sort of different cultures yes I think there are some tensions and approach I think sometimes maybe civil resistance people will be very focused on the social justice lens and very focused on how can we in conflicts where they're profound power asymmetries why are we relying on tools purely of dialogue and purely of it's important but the mobilization to change the power structure has to happen so the dialogue can be meaningful so sometimes there's a lack of appreciation too for the role of like intragroup communication and facilitation in nonviolent movements because it's hard to have a strategic plan that you execute effectively you can't talk to your movement which is often a problem in nonviolent movements so I feel like we would learn a lot from each other but there is sometimes the peace justice sort of thing that comes out a little bit but I think we need to you know move on Afghanistan yeah NSP is probably one of the most amazing programs that I know of the national solidarity program because it was like very deeply rooted in local communities in a way it's kind of like the constructive program these are sort of parallel structures and institutions but connected to the sort of supports the national solidarity program so it's an interesting case of like you know collective grassroots activity service provision being linked to the national government so I'm a fan at least of that program I'll just add to the peace building point this is the bane of my existence like how do these pieces fit together because we do all of it we do dialogue we do peace building we do civil resistance and different people have different backgrounds different schools of thought and they have different backgrounds and we're we operationalize so we have to be careful what we say are we going to risk people's lives when we do some kind of advocacy here you have to really balance that carefully and have a long term strategy but I have to say I with the Q the QDDR and more integration between peace building communities diplomacy conversations democracy conversations and development we're seeing changes and I think as years go on and as we have conversations I feel very positive about the direction of the integration of these two schools of thought I'll jump into the informal because I think the first question was dealt with thoroughly in terms of the informal I think it's absolutely essential it's very important I think about the work that I did Yemen way before you know the change in terms of Hadremotin stuff I had to know the tribal rules I had to know the religious rules right now in Iraq we're part of an intervention on the spiker massacre we're using tribal law and religious law we're not using international law I just won't have the traction and the ability to resonate the way that you know instantly we need I would say there are two pitfalls to be careful of one is when you start turning to informal justice systems that tends to forget women and it tends to forget youth so you need to finesse it so you're integrating that part and making it inclusive and there's more than enough ways within religious and tribal law to do that so you're still using that legal system but you have to push forward for those two elements otherwise they'll get left behind and the other pitfalls you want to be careful because eventually you do want a rule of law system and you want some centralized legal system and so you don't want to elevate tribal and religious law where you're making it impossible then to inter real rule of law down not real but more systematic rule of law down the line on violent groups I just feel the need to say a lot of times they start with good intentions I you know I watched Libya very carefully where very well intentioned youth picked up arms to protect their neighborhoods they were neighborhood watches they had no intention of getting in you know either side of the conflict they had no intention to get it pulled in eventually those same youth became militias and I saw it very painfully transform into militias despite the good intentions of where it started out from I would say we're seeing this in the camps a lot of people are picking arms just to protect their communities in camps they don't intend to be involved in the conflict if we don't do preventative means those young people will become part of the conflict and it'll make it far particularly in Syria and Iraq Lebanon all that region if we're not really engaging in prevention and finding other ways for these youth to protect themselves and be involved without having to pick up the arms of course we have our own anti-war example here in the United States in the 60s that became started peaceful and became violent so the histories are stories are global last round of questions I'm going to take three and very short okay this gentleman and then that gentleman where are our mics and then you'll be the last questioner so up here mic number one and then mic number two where's our second question here in the my name is my name is Amit Tigros from Brandeis University in Boston so I wanted to ask very briefly with regards to your research I'm sure in your long form research it was you know there's a lot of disaggregating looking at where it's more effective, where civil resistance is more effective regionally, nationally in types of conflict whether it's a yeah so I want to know if your research shows what specific tactics have been working for specific types of conflicts what specific types of civil resistance and then for the both of you it how do you then communicate that to the people there like really you know the people who are doing the actual civil resistance how do you get them to know that great thank you sir and then if you could bring the mic over to hello my name is Abdul and my question is pardon me to be the devil's advocate here but anyways my question is specifically to Miss Umar when civil resistance movements happen and they function on the assumption that there is some level of reception, rational reception within the oppressor that is possibly some pigment of it at least but what happens when civil resistance is pitted against psychopathic regimes who for example the one you know in Iraq under Saddam Hussein with the secret police or within ISIS I mean if one is to think of it talking about pluralism in Mosul might not be a very good idea at this point in terms of civil resistance and I ask this from a very personal standpoint I come from Qashmir the Indian administered part of Qashmir and I have grown up viewing civil resistance movement 15 minutes from my house, 5,000 people assemble but what happens when there is systematic thwarting and obliteration of dissent three Qashmiri students were slapped with sedition charges in a mainstream university in India just for supporting Pakistan in a cricket match and I just want to ask this in a nutshell now do you see this as a serious shortcoming of civil resistance movements that it only occurs in certain environments and could have exceptions and so on thank you great thank you that is probably worth a very long conversation but final question or I guess with the American friend service committee great for Kerry's words so I think we found as Kerry said the data that folks like Maria have brought to the conversation really helpful in supporting what we know but another piece of the puzzle is not just what the facts show but what the feelings are and so we have been looking at narrative and what supports this narrative that violence works that military solutions work for humanitarian intervention that military solutions work that violence works for community conflicts and how we can bring about narrative change that actually gels with those facts of what what we see works so how do each of you see that role of narrative as a sort of long-term effort to shift the paradigm away from oh isn't that cute as when Al said isn't that nice that you like peace building so big questions I'm going to ask our panelists to give your final best thoughts they won't be complete but wrap us up narratives incredibly powerful the first day of training that we have for generation change which is again across you know Africa and Middle East is all about storytelling that is the most powerful narrative out there people who've experienced almost all of them have come into contact with violence in some way or another and how they were able to actually choose non-violence sharing that story is incredibly powerful I feel guilty when I do generation change programs because I feel like I'm getting recharged I don't even know what I'm getting them but listening to their experiences is incredibly powerful it goes a little bit to communicating it's not so much as communicating as much as it's creating and enabling an environment where they can communicate with one another and share their stories and recharge this is exhausting draining work so they're able to recharge so that's where the narratives I think are absolutely essential I think you know in terms of if you're fighting a regime that has no ability to reason I would argue that you always have that and you know again I come from Palestinian roots and I see the amount I mean it's hard it's the small wins but the consciousness within Israeli civil society is incredibly strong we don't hear about it but it's strong and I think that there's a real match between the two groups that most people don't envision because you're hearing more about the direct confrontation the conflict and it is there it's on the macro and it's overwhelming but the small wins and and again it's more of the long term you know my experience in the region which is almost 18 years is that conflict only breeds more conflict into the form of violence and you know again there's conflict can be healthy in terms of accountability but it's more from a pragmatic perspective that I finally fell back and said this isn't going to work what are other means thank you minnow I would just add to that I really I think that this peace building and civil resistance can work in every environment it may take 50 years we've been working we've been doing this work for 100 years we have a vision for the next 100 years but I think it's important to think of this famous quote that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step if we can take those single steps and support the people that are doing this work in Kashmir in Colombia in Iraq every day if us as the external actors can put the resources go have a long view be willing to fail support and amplify the voices of the people closest to the conflict then I think we can celebrate those small steps and still have our vision of that thousand mile journey with the end goal of peace and justice and shared security for all so very quickly tactics are there certain tactics working in certain countries over others so we haven't found that per se but we know with exactly creating has created a new data set on tactical sequencing which sequence of tactics actually matters in terms of the outcomes of campaigns what we did find is that alternating between methods of concentration so protest sit in that sort of thing and methods of dispersion that stretch of regimes repressive apparatus is super important so alternating methods of concentration and dispersion very very important I consider most dictatorships to be psychopathic in some way so I in civil resistance has succeeded against like lots of dictators so there's hope even in Kashmir I would say but it's a question of strategy and you know you're in a tough place so a lot of the nonviolent resistance may involve working with nonviolent actors in India in Pakistan you may need to extend the nonviolent battlefield in that case to make it successful but the strategies probably more important than the psychopathology and then storytelling just how many people in this room have seen of course more powerful yes how about bringing down a dictator do you know how orange about the Ukraine so these films documentary films that brought to life a historical nonviolent movements that were sponsored by the international center on nonviolent conflict which Peter Ackerman who's in the front row founded have been incredibly inspirational and people around the world have wanted to see these and sort of replicate them last word from Peter Ackerman yeah who went out for Egypt Revolution Interrupted Peter how about there's a new movie that's just been completed called Egypt Revolution Interrupted and basically is your story these might have an interest in its distribution lovely thank you one other thing you might not remember is that also we did a joint venture with you before you were here on Truth Reconciliation movements in a movie you've had that we actually showed that in Benghazi before Gaddafi fell to plant the seed that was actually one of the things that we have so I want to thank everybody here who's joined us at USIP everybody who's joined us online this is our first live discussion we invite you to become a part of the global campus the global community tune in to these kinds of conversations they're live they're addressing the real issues that we're addressing US Institute of Peace has a continuing commitment to bring together these communities of civil resistance the peace building community working from the ground up in the top down this is a long game the Dalai Lama has a vision of this being the century in which we end violent conflict so maybe this will be your last hundred year plan Kerry I want to thank Peter Ackerman for his continuing support and vision and I would like to very much ask you to join me in thanking our panelists for the conversation today for those who can stay please join us for tea and coffee and we can continue the conversation just outside thank you