 Hello, I'm Jonathan Pinkney, Senior Researcher for the Program on Nonviolent Action at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this event series on People Power, Peace, and Democracy. In these events, we'll bring together academics and activists, peace builders, and policymakers to discuss practical lessons learned from groundbreaking research at the intersection of nonviolent action, peace building, and political change. We'll talk about how mediation can transform nonviolent action movements, show the strategies grassroots movements have used to pressure warring parties to come to the negotiation table, and how action on the streets can carry those negotiations to a peaceful resolution. And we'll take a long-term look at how nonviolent action and inclusive dialogue and negotiation processes can help forge a long-term sustainable democracy that includes the voices of the most marginalized. We hope these conversations will inform and inspire you as together we seek to better understand and bring about a world where conflict and injustice can be resolved without violence. Thank you. Hello and welcome. Thank you for joining us for this event on mediation in nonviolent action campaigns. As in this conversation, we're going to be discussing some key findings from new research into the frequency of mediation, the identity of mediators, and the challenges faced by those mediators in nonviolent action campaigns and movements. While mediation has been extensively studied in the context of armed conflict, it's less well understood in the context of unarmed conflict, despite the fact that major nonviolent action campaigns are becoming an increasingly common and important means of political transformation around the world. So it's a really essential context in which mediation can often play a role. So to discuss this topic, we're very privileged to have two experts working on a cutting edge research project in this area. First we have Dr. Isak Svensson. Isak is professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research in Pasala University in Sweden and is a globally recognized expert on international mediation, religion and conflict, and nonviolent conflicts. Welcome Isak. Thank you so much. And we also have with us today Don van der Reisen. Don is a research assistant on the mediation in nonviolent campaigns project with Dr. Svensson and has done a lot of the on the ground research work for this project. Welcome Don, pleasure to have you here. Thanks very much. All right, well, we'll start fairly broad. I'm curious to hear from both of you if you can just introduce us to your research on nonviolent action and mediation. So our project starts from the premise that we need to study mediation in nonviolent conflicts that we think this is something that has not been studied so much before. And as you said in your introduction, there is a lot of work being done on mediation in armed conflict, but very little actually on mediation in nonviolent campaigns. We tried to approach this in a systematic way. So we have went about to try to collect data in nonviolent uprisings to try to see where it occur and see whether we can compare it to where it does not occur to see the kind of the development over time and to see the sort of the larger global trends. And there are basically three major questions that we want to get that. First of all, we want to understand why does it occur in some campaigns, but not others and in some phases of a campaign and not other phases. Secondly, we want to understand the sort of dynamics of mediation in nonviolent uprisings and campaigns. How does it unfold? How do which type of mediators are involved? What do they do and so forth? And lastly, we want to understand the conditions for success. How come that some mediation efforts are sort of successful in trying to, in getting the parties to some type of an agreement? Overall, this project is sort of a way of combining two lines of research that has been strangely in Huff, I must say, have been very separated over the decades. So the idea that you can mobilize for social change and confrontation, nonviolent confrontation, that kind of civil resistance literature has been very sort of separated from another strand of research, which have been looking on how you can resolve conflict through dialogues. And we are part, I see it as we are part of a larger sort of scholarly trend that is very exciting right now, that tries to merge these two different perspectives, the sort of the revolution and the resolution aspect of approaches to social conflicts. And I think we can start to see some sort of interesting sort of patterns and there is some interesting things flowing out of this research, but we are also very early in the research and we don't have any sort of firm and conclusive answers. And we think that this paved the way for something that we can pose some very interesting research questions. Thanks, Isak. So you mentioned some of these preliminary findings on the trends in mediation in nonviolent campaigns. So what have you found so far about the frequency of mediation in these unarmed conflicts? Is it common or uncommon? And how is that changing over time? I think the data that we have is preliminary and should be taken with some sort of interpreted with some caution. But I think it's fair to say as of yet that it does exist. Mediation is a phenomenon that exists in nonviolent uprisings and nonviolent campaigns. But it doesn't exist in all nonviolent campaigns. It's a relatively rare event. We're talking about sort of somewhere between 20 to 30% of the cases that occur where this occurs. So it's less common, I would say, than in armed conflict. That's one of the findings that stands out to what we have done so far. It does exist, but it's relatively, it's more rare than in armed conflict. And we can see that it's fairly stable over time. We don't see any dramatic shifts over time when we look at those conflicts that get mediated. There is some evidence, but we can discuss that, but there is some evidence that there is some shift in terms of types of mediators who are the types that are mediating this. But Dan, maybe you want to come in on this point as well over the trends of mediation. Yeah, so like Isaac said, it remains a relatively rare phenomenon, mediation, but what's interesting is that what we're doing here, the current research project builds a little bit on research that Isaac has done before. And so in our preliminary sample that we have examined now, we see a slightly higher rate of mediation that we saw before. So there was a 20, about a 20% before and we see 30% now. So the question is whether that holds up in the end, but to say that it is somewhere between those 20 and 30, and yeah, we don't really have enough data to be able to say what the change has been over time, maybe that the little change later on, but so far we can't really draw any conclusions on that. Yeah, what's interesting in terms of the types of mediators that we see is that you see international mediation being more common than domestic mediation. And that there's actually also quite a bit of overlap between the two. So of all the mediated campaigns that we examined, 80% had at least one international mediator, and 50% had at least one domestic mediator. So yeah, we see in half of the mediated cases, there was only international mediation, and 30% of the cases examined, we saw there was both international mediation and domestic mediation, and there's only 20% where only domestic mediators were active. So that's an interesting finding. Interesting. So I'm curious about this underlying rarity that you mentioned, and I think maybe particularly a rarity relative to armed conflict where you mentioned mediation is more common. What do you think might be some of the reasons for that? Why are more mediators participating in mediation in armed conflict than they are in unarmed conflict? I think this is a super interesting question. And to be honest, I don't think we really understand exactly what is the explanation for that. We don't have any firm evidence of that, but we can speculate a bit on the reasons for it. And I think that there is a tendency, I mean, first of all, there is the norm of sovereignty, which means that a lot of mediators would be hesitant to involve in affairs of domestic affairs. So they are generally more reluctant to engage in intra-armed conflict than in interstate conflict, and they would be even more reluctant to engage when it's non-violent uprisings within countries. So that's a norm that cuts against involvement at least from external mediators. And then I think there is also a selection of mediators, a selection process of mediators in terms that they tend to focus on those conflicts that are most risky and most costly. And they don't pay sufficient attention, I would say, to sort of conflict unless they have sort of risen to the stage of becoming violent. And this is not a new sort of insight. It's been around in the literature on conflict prevention for a long time, that the international community needs to act early. It needs to act in social conflicts that are emerging, but that have not reached a trend of becoming violent. And I think we still see a lot of that happening, that the international community in particular is too late on the ball. It's waiting for too long to engage itself. In some earlier work that we have done when we have studied the conditions under which mediation occurred in non-violent conflict, we can see that once conflict become more met with higher levels of repression, then the likelihood of international involvement and mediation increases. So to some extent there is a dynamic that is occurring here with the international community and potential mediators that are refraining from engaging, both because they don't want to upset countries and governments with sovereignty norms, but also because they are waiting a bit, not being attentive enough. And they are waiting and focusing on what they see as more acute situations. So I'm curious to hear a little bit more about what a mediation process in an unarmed conflict actually looks like. So I would love to hear either one of you describe one of the cases of mediation in a non-violent conflict that particularly stands out to you or one that particularly caught your interest as you've done this research. Yeah, so I think mediation overall and generally follow through a particular process, usually follow through a process, and we can see that happening also when we talk about mediation in non-violent conflicts. So it's about finding a way to getting access to the parties, getting in contact with the parties, and then finding a way to set up some form of dialogue between the parties, either through carrying messages between the parties, creating some type of room space for meeting, and then to try to work out a process through which parties can raise their aspirations, try to identify their underlying interests, and on the basis of that find new types of solutions or proposals for solutions, paving the way for some type of compromise or some types of deal between the parties. And an example for this could be the non-violent uprising in Tunisia in 2011, where the so-called Quartet played an important role. The Quartet was a combination of different civil society organizations that to some extent were part of the non-violent uprising, so they were sort of insiders in this type of setting, but they were also civil society organizations that could reach out to the government side. So they had that type of access, they could access both sides, and they created a channel for or a basis for a discussion where different actors in the Tunisian society in the transition period could start to discuss how they could form and develop a sort of post-revolutionary time, so when the dictatorship was outsted, how could they form a more democratic setting? And they had that wider sort of deliberative communication and dialogue and worked out those kind of proposals and ways of constitutional making processes in dialogue that paved the way for a more stable outcome. And Tunisia, as we know, is one of the few examples in the Arab Spring that actually was successful. And I think that success, of course, can be explained by many different factors, background factors and the role of outsiders and other factors as well. But I think it's fair to say that to a large extent it also depended on that there were these types of actors that could play the role of mediators that could maintain sort of this dialogue so that you could not only, the movement, not only mobilized for change, but could also have some type of format to discuss how that changed, that aspiration for change could be transformed into real political transformations that were at a long-term effect. Thank you. Yeah, I know the example of Tunisia is a really great one. I'm curious. I mean, thinking about a mediator like the Quartet that was remarkably effective in achieving its goals, what would you say is the general profile of a mediator in a nonviolent action campaign that is particularly effective? Like what makes an effective mediator? And how maybe is that similar to an effective mediator in a context of armed conflict? Or maybe what are some of the differences? Well, I think there are many similarities. I think the notion of access is an important one for all mediators and in all social conflicts, that's a tricky issue. How do you get access to the parties? And there are relatively few that are actors that actually have an access to one side and also could have that to the other. So be that kind of actor in the middle that play out to both sides. There is, of course, a particularity with nonviolent uprisings and that is that nonviolent uprisings are, if we compare them to armed uprisings, generally broader, right? They are usually broad civil coalition with many types of actors. Sometimes they are very well coordinated and sort of have a structure, but more often than not, more often they would have a more diverse kind of organizational setup. And it's difficult to know who is actually representing their opposition, right? Sometimes you have mass demonstrations, but who is speaking for those mass demonstrations, right? So the question of valid spokesperson for the opposition is a very tricky one when it comes to a nonviolent uprising. That's a difficult question also when we talk about mediation in civil wars, but even more so I would say when we talk about nonviolent uprisings where this is a key challenge. And also, especially when we talk about how they raise demands, but also once you reach sort of the stage of making proposals or getting to some type of deal, it's difficult to get nonviolent uprisings, sort of nonviolent campaigns to sort of back down from earlier stated aspirations because many of the organizations of mobilization campaign structures, right? They are raised and created in order to push for change and that's what they are good at. But they are less able I would say generally to sort of hone in on their demands and sort of stand back for maximalist aspirations and sort of agree to compromise solutions and so forth. And that I think is one key challenge in sort of understanding the particular dynamics here. How can sort of mediation play a role in creating that more type of consolatory approach, non-maximalist approach and how can you pave the way for sort of mutually acceptable agreements between opposition and challenged regimes. Interesting. What lessons would you say your research has for activists who might be planning or participating in nonviolent action? What can they learn about how they should be thinking about the prospects of mediation? I think our research is part of this broader trend of trying to think about how sort of mobilizing for change and taking a sort of confrontational approach can be combined with that sort of what I see as the other leg sort of the conflict resolution aspect. And I think it's interesting because it goes back to some of the original thinkers in this field. I think I mean if we start with Mahatma Gandhi himself sort of was very clear on that sort of negotiation and dialogue was the starting point. You always started with negotiations and dialogue. Then you launched a campaign on sort of nonviolent action with the sort of end aspiration was also negotiation and dialogue with the other side. So dialogue and negotiation was the starting and the end point of the nonviolent action campaigns and was a sort of an integrated part of this process of change. After Gandhi when people sort of theorized of his experience we saw sort of the conflict resolution field and the civil resistance field both taking inspiration from Gandhi and another activist and great names in the sort of social change tradition. But they sort of theorized these different sort of ideas of approaches to social conflict in sort of different ways, right? And those trends developed very differently. And that's why it's so exciting to see I think now just in the very last years we see now a return of sort of a conversation between scholars that are interested in civil resistance and scholars that are interested in dialogue and mediation. But also we start to see greater awareness among activists I think and people that are involved in these campaigns for the need of sort of having a broader more holistic approach to nonviolent conflicts. And this also goes back to your question that you had earlier on sort of why we see sort of difference in terms of mediators and different types of conflicts and why they refrain from engagement in nonviolent conflicts. I think there has been a sort of an approach also in the international community to treat some particular conflicts as sort of conflict that you focus on that are sort of conflicts that you need to mediate and other conflicts where you should just take the role of supporting the opposition. And that kind of sort of dicker to me between different types of conflicts is I think often problematic because you often need both. You need to support a democratic opposition and the democratic voices in social conflicts and armed conflict and nonviolent uprising. But you also need to find ways for creating space for dialogue. And here I think mediation can play a really critical role. Just to jump in there. I think we see this also in some of the data that you know even within the nonviolent campaigns certain wants get picked by the international community as being very important ones. So there you see a very crowded field with many, many different international or regional actors being represented often sending multiple high-profile figures there to try to mediate. Whereas in other campaigns you don't see any mediation at all. So that's something that reflects maybe this broader tendency to want to mediate in particular conflicts that are seen as important and kind of other ones flying under the radar. That's a really I mean that's a really great point. I'd be curious to hear from both of you. So I imagine if we were to ask you know people who are involved in the international mediation they would say well you know we focus on conflicts that are armed or ones that have had large amounts of violent oppression because these are the ones that they really need our help right now and it's urgent and we have kind of limited capacity and attention but and so maybe it's not ideal but it's just you know what we have to do. How might you respond to a mediator an international mediator who might express that? I think that's a fair point and we know that many mediators are on the sort of resource restraints and sort of restraints in terms of getting access in different ways. So I think that's a fair point I think but with still we need to I think strive towards changing the development and being more proactive because we know that I mean I've been focusing studying mediation in armed conflict for many years now and I know that that is very very difficult and most of the mediation efforts in armed conflicts fail. They fail because it is so difficult once the conflict has become violent, especially when the opposition has taken up also armed actions. So I think it's very important to think about how to be proactive and be active in that phase when the social conflict has not escalated to the violent phase and so I think there is an argument that could be made for sort of trying even more actively recognizing all those obstacles and limitations and constraints that are there. I think there's still some more room to to think about how we can develop our sort of capacity to mediate in these types of conflict and it's not only about sort of mediating ourselves sometimes it's about strengthening the local civil society capacity and that's something that stands out from our research also is that we see not only external mediators but what Don said before also domestic mediators. These are called insiders mediators sometimes insider partial mediators. These are mediators that are for instance if we talk about some of the nonviolent uprisings in Latin America I mean the democratic uprising against Pinochet for instance we could see the Catholic Church playing a critical role right and the archbishop of G-Lab playing a very important role having access to both sides and both the the challenge regime and the nonviolent democratic uprising position and could play a very important role in there and I think we also see that in our data that it's fairly common that we see domestic mediators trying to play a role sometimes by themselves sometimes in combination with international mediators and I think building up the domestic capacity to handle the conflict I think is one critical a very important critical aspect to be done. Thank you so if an international mediator or other sort of peace building organization is interested in adopting this more proactive mindset that you're describing and you know whether that means building domestic capacity or engaging in mediation themselves during an unarmed conflict what are sort of are there things that they should look for for conflicts that where that sort of proactive mindset will be most useful places where without some kind of intervention there might be an escalation into violence what are sort of the signs that that international organizations should look for? Well we know from before that there are some signs for sort of escalation in in sort of in in previous research on civil resistance we know that sort of the question of nonviolent discipline in New York South of Jonathan is the one of the leading experts on this that that's a critical a critical question right and also an indicator for larger escalations right when when opposition takes up sort of are not that are not able to to maintain their own discipline that creates risks for further escalation of the of the of the conflict so that's a a risk sign I would say that where you have a big challenge another risk sign I think is the sort of the domestic the the constituencies of uprisings so we know that from previous research that when you have broad coalition that cut across sort of existing social categories in the society so if you have a fragmented society in terms in terms of ethnicity or religious belongings or class belongings or what have you if you then have a nonviolent uprising that's able to cut across those cleavages it's more likely that they will be successful it's more likely that they will be able to to provide a basis for further consolidation of a democratic sort of development over time whereas if you see a sort of nonviolent uprisings that sort of that get sort of polarized in a sense and and Syria could be an example case in point here with which sort of in its early stage was a sort of a very multi ethnic uprising from all from all sectors of the Syrian society but large during the during the campaign it became became much more sort of sectarian in the sense and drawing on particular on the the Sunni Muslim population majority in the country and you got a sort of polarization between different groups and that's also risk sign where you get a problem in terms of sort of a risk for further escalation and further sort of risk that it will develop into a civil war or great thank you so much well my last question for for either of you would be are there any sort of additional lessons learned or or points from your research that you think would be particularly important to emphasize for peacebuilding practitioners or activists or policymakers who are interested in this in this topic Don would you like to come in here this is this is a sort of an early finding but what I've seen in a couple of cases is that when there is a sort of a crowded field of international mediators coming in that they these mediation tends to be more successful if there is a coordination between these different actors so I would say that's trying to operate as a coalition and you know supporting each other's efforts is very important that's one takeaway I would say yeah I think that's an important takeaway and another sort of fundamental takeaway I think is sort of move away from a sort of either or mindset in terms of sort of should we think about these conflicts in terms of nonviolent uprisings where we should support the opposition and just think about how they can they can win in this type of situation or should we think about these types of situations as social conflict where we need to bridge between the two different parties and think of ways of finding some type of sort of solution where both sides could live with and I think we need to move away from that sort of treating conflicts as either one or the other and thinking more about how we can sort of strengthen democratic opposition forces and progressive forces in social conflict and those actors that are important of civil society actors in social conflict and at the same time how we can maintain sort of channels open for negotiation and dialogue and also be you know open for mediation as that one potential effective often effective way to create those kind of channels of communications wonderful well I just want to say thank you once again to to both of you to Isak and to Dan for joining us for this conversation and for conducting this really groundbreaking research you can look for some of these findings to be published in a forthcoming USIP special report and right now next up we'll be having a panel discussion with grassroots activists and international mediators to talk through some of what these patterns and findings look like on the ground so stay with us. I'm joined now by an expert panel of mediation practitioners to speak to how some of the patterns identified in Dr. Spenson's research into mediation in nonviolent action campaigns work in practice. First let me introduce our panel our first panelist Tigani El-Hag is a researcher and consultant working in peace building and mediation in Sudan. He has extensive experience working as a mediator between armed groups and the government of Sudan and during Sudan's 2018-2019 nonviolent revolution worked closely with the leadership of professional associations a youth parliament and other groups involved in the mass uprising. Welcome Tigani. Our second panelist Katia Papagiani is director for policy and mediation support at HD. Her work focuses on the design of peace processes and more specifically on national dialogues and constitution making processes. She supported peace processes in Liberia, Libya, Syria, Myanmar, Ukraine, the Philippines and elsewhere and has previously worked for the United Nations, the National Democratic Institute and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. She holds a doctorate in political science from Columbia University. Welcome Katia. And finally our third panelist is my colleague Juan Diaz-Prins. Juan is a senior expert on mediation and dialogue here at the U.S. Institute of Peace where his work focuses on bridging the gap between theory and practice in mediation. He's previously worked for the Office of the International Mediator in Bosnia and Herzegovina and founded the Berlin Center for Integrative Mediation and he holds a doctorate in international relations from the University of Kent. Welcome Juan. Thank you so much to all of you for being with us and sharing your experiences and expertise to help us better understand the challenges and opportunities of mediation and nonviolent action movements. And I'd like to turn first to Katia for our conversation. So one trend that has come out of Dr. Spencer's research is that mediation is relatively rare in nonviolent movements relative to its occurrence in armed conflict. Having been involved in mediation in both cases, I'm curious as to your thoughts on why that might be. Thank you Jonathan and thank you for including me in this discussion. I'm very excited to participate and to listen also to the experiences and ideas of my fellow panelists. I would like to say that yes it's correct that indeed mediation in armed conflicts is a lot more common and has been a regular tool in the international toolbox in the international community toolbox for the last 30 years. However, the mediation is more and more observed in the past two to five years also in situations of mass protests, political transitions that might not have escalated into armed conflict and situations of nonviolent movements. The reason for why the mediation was not as deployed or not as frequently deployed beforehand probably had to do with the fact that the international community and practitioners conceived of mediation as a tool aimed to resolve conflict. There was in a way a conceptual limitation on how we utilize this tool. A second reason obviously has to do with many political sensitivities that I'm sure we're going to discuss as we go through our conversation today related to international actors in some cases contributing to the resolution of tensions that may have to do with nonviolent movements mass protest political transitions. So these will be the two main reasons that I would drink. Thank you Katja. Juan I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this question of the relative rarity of mediation in nonviolent movements? To me I do and Jonathan thank you. It's always a pleasure to be here and I find this topic to be really interesting because it's coming at a time where mediation is on at least in my opinion on the precipice of changing. For a very long time mediation was very top down. International mediation was very much in the diplomatic hands and the concept of adding civil society was already a little strange and then to add on that another layer of no not even civil society which meant elite NGO people. It's like no no no go out to this decentralized massive people and ask them to participate in what is actually an elite closed circle of people and so back in the 90s when I worked at the international mediators office when we would say that we were going to meet with anyone that was not an established elite NGO the question was why because it had to do with power and the way we conceived power was armed groups as Katja just said and so I found right now we don't know where it's going but there is a struggle in the mediation world to flip mediation and to make it not just bottom up but to make it broadly inclusive right. People think there's a contradiction between bottom up and top down no I think there are people trying to break open the doors of mediation and let other people in and so I don't know where it's going but I think that's a big part of it. Wonderful thanks Juan. Tigani I'm curious to turn to you and hear your thoughts on this coming from the coming from the case of Sudan. Now I know you've met you've worked both in this mediation with armed groups and in this you know more open mediation environment where there are many different kinds of organizations that might need to be involved so I'm curious to hear sort of your perspective and experience on the differences between mediation with an armed group and then mediation in this context of a more sort of diffuse broad nonviolent movement. Thank you first of all and I'm very happy very glad to be part of this panel and discussion. Yes absolutely mediation in the case of if you can talk it as a conflict resolution between two different conflicting parties it is very obvious and clear. There's two partners, central government in this case or rebel groups or whatever armed struggle groups and medias but in the case of nonviolent yes we can find we can say there is a central government or controlled government or whatever dictatorship and there are some kind of opposites in most cases it will be in form of professionals, trade unions civil societies etc etc and the issue of mediation will put a very logical question. Mediation is going to be between who? Between the government and who? Who is the other side of the table? Okay if you can develop the idea of we can develop the idea of mediation itself and the topics that can be discussed or in case of Sudan the topics discussion would be yes peaceful transit, the transformation of power, the democratic transformation, peaceful democratic transformation, human rights issues all these issues can be put on the table as a agenda for this discussion and mediation between two conflicting parties but in nonviolent movement who is going to be to represent this nonviolent government in the other side? This is very important and one of the challenges issues in mediation between the government and the nonviolent movement. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. I mean I'm curious to hear from you, how did you think about going about that challenge? Any insights on how to answer that question of who is going to be on the other side of the table? This will take directly to the question of first of all to identify who is in the other side of the table. Let us take the case of Sudan as an example. In 2019 after the overthrow of the government so many different political actors just came up on the scene as a professional association, civil societies, political actors, political parties and to make, to do this kind of mediation take place, let us take an example. AU sent what the back to be intermediate between the army, the central, there's no government, there's army between the army and the civil or between the civilian and military. If we assume that the military was part from the former part and they are representing the central government, the mediation at that time the mediation is between one concrete agenda in the side of the military or the army and we have different opinions and different positions on the other side of the civilians. So the starting started with the various of all to unify all these different civil societies in one table to bring them on one table and then start the process of mediation itself. I mean the context. Here the question of the context is very important. Therefore any mediation or any kind of mediation, first of all, they have to understand the context that they're going to report to be part of mediation. Thank you so much to Ghani and I think this question of representation and identifying who should you even be talking to is a really key challenge in this space and Katya, I turn to you and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on someone who is frequently coming from the outside to engage in mediation. How have you or people at HD thought about going about this question of identifying who to speak to in these situations where one side is much more diffuse and diverse? Thank you Jonathan. I agree wholeheartedly with what Ghani said that it's the most important asset for a mediator in this situation is to have a strong understanding of the context more than in any other situation. If you don't have that strong understanding you run a lot of risks and most importantly you're under risk of actually doing harm instead of contributing to the the resolution of the tensions and so I would say that our engagements in these situations in these types of settings I would categorize them rather in two baskets. One basket would be countries where we had been present for a long time and where we had local teams of national what we call in the mediation field inside the mediators meaning nationals of those countries who might have worked in political parties in parliaments and trade unions and civil societies in their countries. So we relied on the networks and the advice of those colleagues on how to go about it and then there is the other type of engagement where we might have been asked to assess whether there is a role for us in countries where we had not been present before that we're going through situations of mass protests or political transitions of one sort or the other. So in the first basket the way that we would go about it would be through a diversity of tools that doesn't necessarily apply to all situations and might actually some of those tools might be politically unrealistic and not feasible while in other situations they might work perfectly well. One of those is public consultations. So when you know the when you feel comfortable that you have enough understanding of the situation with the actors then you might as a third party mediator hold public consultations but we did in some situations was holding in different parts of the countries with different types of constituencies that we felt confident were relevant for the conversation. Those consultations were used in order to introduce the concept of dialogue. First to introduce the concept of dialogue the concept of negotiation as a way of dealing with the issues that the specific country was dealing with but also as an opportunity to air the issues and to allow the participants of those consultations to listen to each other and also understand that there is within the movement diverse opinions diverse interest groups that are represented. A second tool that we have used is to hold but probably takes place later on in the period of in the lifespan of non-violent movement but to hold national dialogues. Those usually are relevant tools when actually some sort of understanding has already been achieved on the way forward. So they're not national dialogues are not relevant tools of the very early days when people are pouring out on the streets but there may be in some situations a relevant tools a few months down the line when just a very basic agreement on how to move forward has been reached but when everything else has not been agreed yet and just I will say I will mention a third tool and there are many actually and I'm sure Juan will have more ideas and the third is social media analysis. Through social media analysis we were able to identify important influencers but also to identify the issues that were most discussed especially when it comes to protest that were dominated and influenced heavily by youth. So those actors are usually were very happy and active on social media and so having an analysis and an assessment of what it is that they're discussing what groups are forming around what issues on social media was useful for us in order to then inform the other tools that I described such as national dialogues and public consultations. I will leave it there. So maybe just one quick follow-up question before I'm curious to hear Juan's perspective on this as well but so it strikes me that what you're describing is you know in order to gain that context it's a very lengthy process in a way or could at least be a very very lengthy process with lots of sort of steps involved here and yet sort of what we see in a number of these you know kind of mass nonviolent movements is you know very rapidly developing events you know one I think about sort of the uprising in Tunisia in 2010-2011 where it was you know it was a matter of weeks before President Ben Ali fled the country. Are there ways to sort of still be effectively assisting like with mediation when kind of events are moving so quickly that there isn't sort of space for say a lengthy public consultation process? Very much so and I think this is where the classic tools of mediation are very relevant and applicable. When you see a thing about the classic tools of mediation those are the tools of messaging using back channels, discrete communications, confidential exchanges of positions and often through shuttling coming to the beginnings of an agreement of how to move forward towards resolving a conflict or at least diffusing tensions and in those early days of very high tense moments that you just described Jonathan the classic tools of mediation are very relevant. We have found again in our experience that we can play that role in situations where we have been present in situations where we or in situations where we have colleagues in the general HD family so to speak who have a history of engagement through previous professional lives in a particular country and a history of relationships because those types of interventions at those early tense moments require very close relationships of trust with people who are in positions of power so that you can play a hopefully useful crisis management and tension diffusion role through these tools of shuttling back channeling and developing confidence building measures. So this happens actually a lot in HD engagements in countries where we have had lengthy long-term presence. Wonderful, thank you Katja. Juan, I'm curious to hear your thoughts maybe specifically on this question of identifying who even to speak to and other challenges that might arise in the unique context of a nonviolent action movement. One of the biggest mistakes we make as outside mediators is that we think that when we come you know it's all going to work very linear and very quickly. So we have this linear expectation. I assess, I meet the heads, I discuss with them, we come up with a solution, it will be implemented and we will monitor and evaluate it and we'll have success. And that's a very power mediator approach to very old style international government based diplomatic approach. I personally come from the perspective of more from a transformative perspective where I feel that my presence in the country is already going to have some effect. And so I'm just happy to meet people and if they actually trust me and develop a relationship with they might tell me who the right person is to me and I don't see that as a waste of my time because I believe that the top down process will get there as well. They'll come back and say well why didn't the other side do what they said they were going to do and then they're going to try to find the power behind the power. So we're going to meet at the same place and it's going to take us the same amount of time because it isn't our conflict, right. And so we're working on almost like a virtual time kind of chaotic space. So I think that there are people genuinely who are working on avoiding genocide and mass murder and they definitely need to get the quickest route to that who the power is. And I think that they're absolutely right in going to the top and then trying to go down. And then there are people like me that go from the bottom and up. We're still going to meet more or less in the same place because there's a German expression that says everyone cooks with water, right. And so at the end of the day we're all trying to help in some way and in most of these countries there is only a small group of people who are privileged enough to be able to not to have to choose between mediation and negotiation and food security, right. So I think for me it's a process of getting to know them and sooner or later that will tell me who the right person is. And I'll just give you one very short example. When I was working in Kosovo and I wanted to work on the issue of integration which serves in Albanian community and we were doing it through the gender lens and we were having a meeting of men and women in the community and somehow I didn't feel that I had the right people at the table. And the names I was being given somehow didn't seem like the right names. And so finally one lady said to me, well if you go out 20 kilometers outside the village over near the mountain there is this lady and she lives there and she will never come to this meeting but if you visit her she's going to tell you if you have the right people at the table. And so I went to this lady I had a cup of coffee with her and she was like no no no these are not the right people and she gave me a list of other people. And she said these people if you really want to make a difference in this community these are the women that should be at the table but they're overlooked for a whole series of structural issues that are going on. And I found that fascinating you know I don't think I could have gotten there quicker but I definitely got to them just by listening to people tell me about other people. So there's the informal way and there's a formal way and I don't think either one is right it's just a question of and I wanted to just put this out there who the person who you are what your circumstances and what the issue is will determine who you speak to and at what level and and I think it's it's okay we can all coexist in that space. That's great thank you Juan. At Tigani I want to turn back to you with another question about Sudan. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what made the most sort of effective mediators during the nonviolent movement in Sudan. Were there sort of characteristics of those of people that worked particularly well in mediating that conflict? Again thank you. Just let me take you back a little bit you know before 2009 2019. And let us just have the idea of just go out a little bit from the idea of the classical mode of mediation. I mean by classical mode of mediation. The two conflicted parts and maybe in the case of the revolution as I just put the question on the table I mean who's the same part of the table to mediate. Okay but it just came up into my mind mediation sometimes can take different forms and we'll take an example. In 2015 you said and through two respectable men presented a proposal to the government of Sudan through Mr. Kimman and Lemon and at that time this proposal was is they call it soft landing. And soft landing the idea actually was to convince the government of Sudan for a peaceful democratic transformation through an interim period. And technically if you can see this kind of intervention by the government of the US who use it. It was a just simple proposal to a government for ideas to take it or to leave it. But as I said before technically you can say it's not that we mediation but politically it was a mediation. Mediation between the government of Sudan and a nonviolent movement from the other side and it's unidentified. You cannot identify the political parties that are civil societies that are being received. Now such a form also developed during the time of the revolution. There's a lot of people that demonstrated in the streets. Who took on the power? Negotiation was between them. By the end of the day the classical form of negotiation it was happening between a group of civilians that said they claimed that they represented the masses and the army. And this is a typical kind of mediation, a kind of conflict resolution. And the mediator was the African Union. Now the question is the ultimate goal from the mediation at that time is just to prevent any escalation for violence in Sudan and to go for an interim period and then to go for peaceful and safe democratic transformation. Now the case if you are talking about people would like to make this idea more applicable in the case now in the Sudan recently that we have a transitional government. How people would like to talk about mediation? What the fork of mediation should have to take place in Sudan? And between who and who? In my ideas I think now let us talk about the mediation. It can take different forms of interventions from different international community and from civil societies and from different actors by the end of the day they are supportive for the democratic transformation. I from my side I can call this is an intervention that's helping in peaceful transformation even if without taking place the classical shape of information between different parties. Actually in fact they are supporting in a successive kind of mediation. This is in my idea because now classically we cannot identify two conflicting groups here in Sudan between who transitional government and who transitional government and the because of such kind of mediation and when we have simply I'm thinking let's I'm trying to think loudly let us rethink the strategies and tactics of mediation when dealing with the context of Sudan especially now not before because previously it was clearly identified that there's a utilitarian government and there is some kind of mediation have to take place between the two sides now there's no any enemy on the other side there's only a transitional government we need to take it to the other side to peacefully to transform the government into a fully democratic system so a mediation here in this case and in this context should have to take another form and another shape and another tactics and another kind of let us say mechanism if we are going to deal with it as a mediation in the case of Sudan. Thank you. Great thank you Tukani. I want to sort of go on something you said there about the need to rethink strategies and tactics of mediation in this particular kind of context and Katya I'll turn to you I'm curious to hear your thoughts on you know what kinds of skills and training have been most useful for mediators to increase their effectiveness in doing this rethink of strategies and tactics in the context of working with nonviolent action movements so any any thoughts you might have on that subject? It's a difficult question Jonathan because the skills you need are the ones that in a way Tukani describes very well the skills related to capacity to interact with many different types of actors and stakeholders you ideally would have the social and political analytical skills to interact with senior political party representatives, army representatives, youth actors, civil society, the average person on the street in order to do exactly what Juan described earlier to smell and feel the situation and understand what networks are necessary in order to build some sort of a dialogue process that will help the society or the community get out of the tension or the crisis and those skills are difficult to acquire because as we have been discussing in this session mediation is not anymore about a table it's not anymore about concrete parties so you in a way in the 90s it would have been simple to this to to train and to educate younger people or anyway new entrants to the field because you could describe the concept of this negotiation table the concept of that conflict party but now as Tukani described the whole society is engaged in these situations in the renegotiation of what the country should be so to answer your question I think the skills should be ones of conflict analysis that is inclusive actor mapping that is inclusive I don't know actually if networking is something that whether networking is something that can be taught through training but made clearly that that's one of the main skills and actually I think understanding the social media reality is key maybe not in our countries but if we're thinking about Southeast Asia situations that probably you can imagine which ones we can be referring to a lot of the debates and the discussions and the organizing take place on social media and if you're not literate at least to understand how people use these tools you will not be effective in your work wonderful thank you so much Katya Juan any any thought any final thoughts on sort of this question of skills and training for mediators to be more effective in working with movements and I think after that we will we will wrap up so I'd like to I'd like to just add two things one is to what Tukani said and about needing a new form of mediation so this is just my own personal understanding right globalization and digitalization fragmented the world and mediation will have to fragment with it right this idea that there is one mediator and that we should all wait to see if xxx mediator has achieved something in 18 months or 22 months or whatever I that's not the way the world works anymore so it might be that you have multiple mediators working in multiple spaces one with armed groups one with social groups one with political leaders right um one with internationals who all want a piece of what's happening and that those mediators are going to have to learn to work together and I'm going to be very honest the vanity of mediators is very high I'm included in that I'm not I'm not pointing to anybody else according to myself we all want to I call it the Jesus Christ uh syndrome right we all think we're going to save it right so um I think we're going to have to learn that we also have to be inclusive in our mediation efforts I'd like to also add and you're going to probably think oh my god here comes the transformative person I want to add to everything that Tanya said I agree 100 but I believe you need to have the skill of being able to put together a team and realize that you can't do everything yourself and you got to really trust your team and let them shine and do what they need to do so you really do have to have that kind of I have seen mediators fail because they don't have organizational skills and number two and three and I I feel terrible I feel like I'm getting a very stereotypical the mediator really has to have empathy and the ability to understand that they are a trust building mechanism so parties do not trust mediators because they're appointed by the UN or the EU or the Americans or the Europeans you have to build trust and if you don't know how to do that right if you don't understand the basic building blocks of trust building and empathy you will never be believed enough to make those hard concessions that the parties will inevitably have to make they will do it for people they trust they will say okay Katya because it's you and if you promise me I'm not going to be hurt by this I will believe you Katya and that that personal moment between a mediator and the parties doesn't disappear even in the grandest mediations and I think if we can teach them organizational skills trust building and empathy all the other stuff comes with you know the proper classical comfort management training that all of us get when we're studying and there are enough people out there great thank you so much Juan and thanks to all of you for for joining us today we'll wrap up our our discussion there I'm so grateful to all of you for for joining us and discussing this important topic and also to Dr. Esauks Benson and Don van der Reisen for to conducting this new research you can look for the publication of their research results in a forthcoming USIP special report in the coming months I hope this discussion has been informative and helpful for all of you joining us as we dig into these crucial connections between nonviolent action and peace building make sure to join us for our next event in our people power peace and democracy event series in the coming weeks where we'll be discussing new research on how nonviolent action campaigns can impact peace processes in civil wars thank you very much thank you Jonathan thank you Jonathan thank you Jonathan