 OK, I think we're going to get started. It's really awesome to see a packed house for our conversation this morning about the intersection of nonviolent movements, peace building, and unarmed civilian protection. I'll start by saying that the general sense of this group is that not only do these activities relate to one another, but we consider them to be mutually reinforcing components of conflict transformation, which we know is all about focusing on the root structural causes of conflicts and transforming negative, destructive conflict into positive, constructive conflict. My name is Maria Steffen, and I'm a senior policy fellow here at USIP and also a member of our newest center at the Institute, which is the Applied Conflict Transformation, or ACT Center. And we actually began a conversation about the nexus of civil resistance with peace building at an event here last summer that President Nancy Lindborg moderated, and which was linked to a global audience through USIP's online course, Civil Resistance and the Dynamics of Nonviolent Movement. And you can actually find a nice overview of that event online on our Olive Branch post. And we discussed during that conversation that nonviolent movements, which employ direct action tactics like boycotts, strikes, silent marches, stayaways, sit-ins, and the like, not just street protests, let me say, not just protests, have become significant global actors. From Guatemala to Macedonia to Lebanon and Kenya, citizens are challenging exclusionary policies, corruption, and poor governance using creative collective action and engagement with governments. And some of you may be familiar with a study that I conducted a few years ago with Erica Chenoweth, which examined which form of struggle, violent or nonviolent, has been more effective historically, both in challenging formidable opponents like dictatorships and in bringing about more peaceful democratic societies. To summarize the findings of why civil resistance works, nonviolent resistance won by about a two to one margin. And the main reason why, according to the research, is that the average nonviolent campaign attracts something like 11 times the level of participants as the average violent campaign, which gives nonviolent campaigns a serious strategic advantage. Also important for the conversation today, the skills involved in nonviolent civic campaigns, coalition building, negotiation, self organizing, maintaining nonviolent discipline, all help reinforce nonviolent democratic norms and practices. Yet there are still concerns, very legitimate in fact, that nonviolent resistance and peace building goals and methodologies might be at odds with one another. After all, one approach seeks to escalate conflict, albeit nonviolently, and involves disrupting the status quo in order to challenge power asymmetries. The other approach seeks to de-escalate conflict through dialogue, negotiation, and finding common ground. So these are good, healthy tensions that we're gonna be working through this morning. Meanwhile, one of the most significant peace building methodologies out there, unarmed civilian protection, focuses on the direct protection of civilians, including those engaged in nonviolent movements, and on building support for local peace infrastructures. This methodology, which includes practices like interpositioning, ceasefire monitoring, and confidence building helps create the space for nonviolent organizing and peace building. So to help tease out the nexus between nonviolent movements, peace building, and unarmed civilian protection, we have a fantastic lineup representing the academic, activist, NGO, and policy-making communities. This is our version of sector alignment here at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and we're going to launch the conversation this morning, and you have all of their bios in your packet, but very briefly, we're gonna start with Anthony Juana St. John, who's the director of the International Peace and Conflict Resolution MA program at American University, and a senior advisor to the U.S. Institute of Peace, who researches international negotiation and mediation and peace processes. And Anthony is actually working on a USIP special report right now on the intersection of negotiation and nonviolent action, some of whose findings you'll get a sneak preview of today. Next, we're going to hear from Oma Lola Lola, Adele Osa, who's the executive director and co-founder of Act for Accountability, a non-profit African diaspora organization committed to building a culture of accountability among Africans in the diaspora through civic engagement. Lola is very engaged in the Bring Back Our Girls movement. She's got some bracelets to share with folks if they're interested, and other civic actors, and she and I actually recently briefed some Hill staffers on why movements matter in the fight against violent extremism and why it's important for donors to have a movement mindset, which we'll talk about today. And then we'll have Shazka Byerly, who's a senior advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at CICE, and the author of Curtail and Corruption, People Power for Accountability and Justice, along with an accompanying training curriculum. She's also the lead researcher at the World Bank for a World Bank Nordic Trust Fund project entitled Citizen Participation is a Human Right, a human rights-based approach to the World Bank's citizen engagement mandate, which sounds very cool. After Shazka, we have Mel Duncan, who's the founding director and director of advocacy and outreach for Nonviolent Peace Force, which is an international NGO that provides direct protection to civilians caught in violent conflict and works with local civil society groups on violence deterrence throughout the world. Active in conflict zones throughout the world, Nonviolent Peace Force was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. Interestingly, Mel and I were recently together at a Vatican-hosted conference in Rome to talk about how to move from just war to just peace, and so perhaps Mel will inject some of those reflections in his remarks today. Finally, we have Neil Levine, who's the director of the Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance at the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, or Dacia at USAID. Some know Neil from his time as the director of the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, and also he's a very well-known Latin-Americanist. I've had the distinct honor and pleasure of working with Neil's DRG team at USAID on the Civil Society Innovation Initiative, which is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on supporting civil society in an era of closing spaces. The six of us were in violent, or maybe nonviolent agreement, that to make this a veritable conversation this morning, rather we would keep it conversational rather than having back-to-back presentations, which I think will be more interesting for you all. So that's the plan before we open it up to a conversation with y'all. Finally, before we get rolling, one kind of exciting piece of news. Following a series of conversations that we've had with the Alliance for Peacebuilding staff and leadership, we've decided to create a new alliance for peacebuilding working group on the nexus of nonviolent action and peacebuilding, which is very good. And together with my colleagues from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and maybe you can stand up, Hardy Merriman and Catherine Hughes Freytech, we've worked to develop an initial concept note for what this study group would be doing, and I believe the Alliance for Peacebuilding will be sending around this draft concept note for folks who may be interested and potentially want to join the working group. Okay, so now I'm gonna leave here and start the conversation. So we're gonna start with Anthony. Anthony, you've done more thinking than probably most people about the nexus of nonviolent action and peacebuilding. So what do we know about how these come together, both in theory and in practice? Well, I think a lot of people intuitively feel that they are connected. I always felt that they were very connected in my own experience. In my youth years as a agitator and activist, didn't think that negotiation was very separate from those things, but there was a time in my life where I did then come to feel that rights should merely be granted and implemented and that we don't need to bargain over those things. So I myself sort of experienced the unity and then the divergence of the two concepts. It came as somewhat of a surprise that the literatures of the two have grown quite divergent over the years. And when we look at some of the roots, at some of the founding writings, when we look at Martin Luther King's writings, we find that there is no real dichotomy between the two. The fundamental challenge, whether it's repression, social injustice, or those two combined with incalcitrance on the part of those that have power to even have dialogue about the injustice is the fundamental challenge, I think, that civil resistance seeks to change. It's important, I think, to break down both the structural violence and the unwillingness to discuss the structural violence. And in that regard, King and Gandhi were all about using civil resistance certainly as a means of educating all who are impacted by injustice but also about creating the opening for discussion. And they didn't see negotiation as separate at all. They saw it as organically connected. The fundamental link, therefore, is really quite direct. Direct action opens up an avenue of leverage to create dialogue, to create negotiation spaces. So there's the challenge, the link, and then I think there's the fundamental frustration which I already named, which is that when you arouse people's awareness about rights, about the denial of those rights, and activists have long known that not everybody is aware that their rights are being trampled. When you arouse people's awareness that way, there is still that process of, well, what do we do about it? And some of the rhetoric has always been about, well, rights should just be granted. And the denial of rights merely needs to be mitigated right away. In fact, all the cases teach us that there are tremendous opportunities for negotiation in the implementation of rights. And I'm picking on rights, but rights, I'm really thinking of it much more broadly. The amelioration of injustice and structural violence. So there's a tension between the desire to see justice enacted and made real and the attainment of that state. So for me, that's just the first link. There are many further links between negotiation and civil resistance. I just wanna top level mention a few and certainly there's much more to say, but Maria has asked us to keep it brief or we'll play more foreigner songs. So. Foreigner, how was jukebox hero everyone? Thanks. A movement that seeks to reverse or change a situation of structural violence needs to reach out to the public that it wants to rouse. That is in a sense, a public communication project, but it's also a negotiation. That's one. Another, I think, is the negotiation with like-minded groups. You often need a very broad coalition of groups to enact social change. There could be a spearhead to use a violent metaphor, unfortunately, or a vanguard, but ultimately you need to build broad coalitions. Can I just ask, what's a good example of where a movement has employed effectively good negotiation skills to build a broad-based coalition? Well, building on foreigner, I mean, and going back to the 80s, there were a number of marches in Central Park, I remember, going to about the nuclear freeze movement. That was a successful amalgamation of groups all over the country and frankly internationally that sought to link with each other and then to link across issues. So that the disarmament movement was connected to many other issues of social justice. So at least temporarily, it had an important impact in broadening consensus. That's just one from my personal experience, right? But there are many others. So coalitions, publics, but then the negotiation with the counterparts and the adversary. That is never going to be a one-time negotiation. The process of influencing your counterpart when it's articulated as the Syrian opposition did as being one single end state, the removal of a leader, rather than an ultimate end state, like a more just and open society, leads to a kind of deadlock. When you think about it in terms of what can we do along the way and that the end state is more broad than just the absence of one bad leader, that opens up the door to lots of important negotiations. What kind of a constitutional order? What sort of a society? What kind of an economy? How will we rotate power in our society, et cetera? What kind of a society will we build? All of those are negotiable. And let me stop there and open the opportunity for others. No, thank you, Anthony. And now moving to Lola. Major news item recently has been the return of the first Cheebaq girl who's one of nearly 300 who were kidnapped by Boko Haram over two years ago. And I guess my first question to you is what role, if any, did the bring back our girl's movement play in that development? And even beyond the issue, the tragic issue of the kidnapped Cheebaq girls, how is Nigerian civil society, including movement actors, addressing the corruption in human rights abuses that have helped to fuel the violent conflict and violent extremism? So, yes, so the return of Amina was, I'm still thrilled about that because it's been two years, today's actually day 772 since the kidnapping of these girls. But since that, Boko Haram has killed thousands, oh, sorry, not just killed, yes, killed and kidnapped thousands of other people who are still in captivity. To the question of what has the role of the movement played? If anyone knows Nigeria, this incident would have gone unnoticed. It would have been silent, there would have been no action, there would have been no pressure on the Nigerian government and other state actors to make sure that there is some kind of a rescue effort or some kind of resources being directed into this battle against Boko Haram. That's the first thing I think that that's been a success of the movement. It is that everywhere President Buhari goes or any representative of the Nigerian government goes, they're asked questions about, what about the Chiba girls? And to me, I know it can be a nuisance for him, but that's my job. It's to make sure that you feel uncomfortable everywhere you go because it is an atrocious act that two years later, Nigerian citizens are being held captive. We're not a weak country, well, depending on some academic theories or if Nigeria is a failed state or not, Nigeria is the largest group when it comes to the ECMO. And so if we can have peacekeeping forces in Rwanda, in Liberia and in other places, heck, we can't do it in our own country. That to me is one of the ongoing advocacy as well as the push of the movement is saying, besides the issue of security, besides the issue of the need for a rescue, there are many other things that we have to consider. One of the questions is, what do we bring these girls back to? And that is a bigger question versus just anything else because there is no, we do not know, and here is where you talk about negotiation. Unfortunately, we're dealing with a situation where they don't wanna talk to us. We have meetings with representatives of the government and it's just a stone wall. So what do we do? We work with our allies. We work with the US. That's why we created actual accountability is if the Nigerian government will not sit down and talk to its stakeholders, AKA its citizens, then where we can leverage our visibility in the United States, being in Washington DC, is to work with the US Congress that also has a stake in Nigeria. It's to talk about the issues of human rights. It's to talk about the issues of non-violent counter-insurgency tactics to promote the facilitation of rescues of what a return and the rebuilding of communities. Is there anything the movement itself could be doing to increase its domestic leverage over the government on these issues? Yes. Well, I understand the movement is supported by individuals like myself, you know, who, we're an organic movement. We're not a movement where someone said, okay, let's come together as a movement. The concept of movement building right now in Nigeria is not at the forefront of people's thoughts. There are many issues that people don't see as movements and the potential for movement building and citizen organizing. And so here is where the movement could do more in our education of the citizens as to why this issue is not just about the Chibok girls, but it's a larger conversation about the region. And I think this issue about Boko Haram is not just a Nigeria issue, it's a regional issue. It crosses Nigeria's borders and with Nigeria as the most populous country in Africa, the largest GDP and a key hub for the West African region. If Nigeria does not get a grip on this issue, from a peaceful, peaceful perspective, then we're potentially seeing the failure of a whole continent. And that is part of the conversation. I don't think we in the movement have been really able to tangibly communicate to citizens, regular citizens, but also the question of how this issue affects them directly. And it's so hard because there's so many other issues plaguing Nigerian citizens, whether it's from fuel scarcity to any other thing. So how do you engage people who feel so disenfranchised that I can barely get to work? Now you're asking me to fight on behalf of people who are hundreds of miles away and I don't have a direct correlation of how that matters to me. And finally, if there were one thing that external actors could do to support sort of the strengthening of the education process of the movement building process, what would that be? One, fund organizations or groups that are interested in movement building. I think one of the seriously lacking things is capacity building, training, having people understand what it means to be a movement. That is really lacking. And from our perspective, I'll speak from our organization, most people don't want to fund or advocacy or peace building efforts. They're looking for more groups to be doing direct service work on the ground because there is a greater need. But our argument is, not but, and our argument is, it has to be both. It can't be just direct services without empowering people to give them the tools and the skills to be able to do what they need to do on their own behalf. Because when you see that you are not able to have dialogue or negotiate with the state actors on a local state and federal level, then are we left to just be hopeless? I refuse to believe that. And unfortunately, it's not just in Nigeria, in many other African countries, you see that as the consensus, is the continued growth of apathy. But it's not because people don't want to get engaged, it's because they don't know how to get engaged. I think this is where donors and other institutions, especially professionalized NGOs can also support. Many NGOs are skittish in getting involved in peace building advocacy civic engagement issues because of their funding. And that's the truth. So if there is a requirement for donors and other institutions that seem to have access to capacity building and training support, then we're able to work with more people to say, you know what, this work, the two years that we've been, you know, people self-funding, this Bring Back Our Girls movement does not have to be and you get more people engaged. Thank you very much, Lola. Shaska, yes, very strong recommendations there. Shaska, as one of the world's leading authorities on nonviolent movements targeting corruption. What have you seen in your research on these people power campaigns targeting corruption? How have these campaigns combined nonviolent direct action with engagement, like negotiation and dialogue, to challenge and institutionalize abuses of power in different contexts? I think it's on. Well, there are so many examples. I really had a hard time to choose one. So I'll just pick one, but I could give you at least nine, 10 off the top of my head. But Lola, thanks for everything you said, because in fact, everything you said relates to any of the examples I could give you from my research. So in the practice of nonviolent resistance, we have an array of tactics and an array of strategies that are employed by people. And in that array are both tactics that can be very disruptive, but also tactics that are very much deliberately engaging with others, whether it's the public to bring them on board, as you mentioned, whether it's officials, whether it's international actors. So in fact, these all go together. And there's a synergy among all these different types of tactics. So to give you one example, and I have two minutes, right? One minute 45 seconds now. Okay. Some of you may be familiar with an exemplary community-based organization in Mombasa, Kenya named called Muslims for Human Rights, Muhudi. Which by the way was attacked by its respective government for its actually its good work, which was threatening many vested interests and abuse of power status quo. But anyway, they have survived and thankfully. But here's an example of what do people do when they are, they need actual, for their survival, they need certain services, they need certain assistance because they are poor and they are marginalized. They may not have confidence, they may feel hopeless, they may be disengaged, but they may be willing to do something and they actually have a huge amount of talent that nobody recognized up until that point. So I will describe to you in 60 seconds, 10 seconds per point, a six step social audit process which involves what we would call nonviolent action. But it can also be called social accountability. It can also be called citizen participation. You can give it many labels, but what it involves ultimately the nugget is people gathering together harnessing the power that they have through nonviolent actions and wielding that power for some very specific goals. So they developed something called a six step social audit. Of the six steps, at least three of them if not more involve what one could call dialogue, negotiation, engagement, and one could call it very constructive because ultimately that's what one wants from one's tactics, whether they're any tactic one engages in, one wants it to be effective and constructive towards the goals of that campaign or movement. So the first step is information gathering. And in this case, they were monitoring community, no, constituency development funds. This is something that the people in the communities, in the slums came to Muhuri and talked to them about. And they said, where's this money going? It's supposed to be for a project in our community. Nobody asks us what we need and we don't even see any projects. And so this was the nuggets that was actually the citizens who identified the problem. So they need to get information. Where are they gonna get that information from about the constituency development funds and how they are, what the plans are, how they're being spent, et cetera. They have to go to officials. You need to have constructive engagement. You need to have negotiation. You need to be persistent and maybe a little bit of nonviolent action or direct action at the same time. Second step, training local people, training citizens, the residents of the slums, to actually be able to monitor these constituency development funds. Go out and check the projects, see what they are, engage with their fellow citizens, have the confidence to be able to do this. That requires training. It just doesn't happen. But through that training, the citizens' capacities are realized. They see themselves what they are able to do. Again, you have all these elements in play, engagement, dialogue. And then third step, educating and mobilizing fellow citizens in the community. Again, what do you need? Part of that. Part of what you may be doing street theater, you may be doing leafletting, you may be doing musical processions, what they did, but they also do other things in order to dialogue and engage with citizens. And you have to educate not only your community, but you have to educate people even in the official institutions. Fourth is inspecting the project sites. You need a lot of engagement skills and negotiation and dialogue to do that. Again, with officials, again with the community members, because the community members, you're going out and asking them, what did they observe? What did they see? What can you learn from them? Finally, you have a public hearing. Who has heard of the public hearing or in India it's called John Sunwai. This is where someone raised his hand. This is where the citizens come together and they invite the officials, they invite the member of parliament and they present the results of their social audit. This is an example of, again, dialogue, negotiation and people power pressure all at the same time. So you can have actually with one action all these different dynamics at once. Finally, you have the follow up with the officials to make sure that they do what they promise to do. Again, you see these dynamics going on. So you see these two go hand in hand. Engagement, disruption, engagement, action. So I'll stop there. No, that's great, thank you Shaska. And I think that just highlights the point about the way in which these come together. There's often a stereotype of nonviolent action and civil resistance that it's all about sticking it to governments. At the end of the day, just confronting, saying no, dissent. The end of the day, if you want to achieve your objectives on the most of the times in the vast majority of campaigns you have to involve tactics of engagement, negotiation in order to consolidate victories, build coalitions and work with reformist elements in government. So that's a really good example of that. Maria, can I just add one point? Yes, ma'am. If you think about it, in situations where people do not have a lot of institutional power and those who have institutional power are not listening or not caring about the needs of the people, even engagement is a tactic of disruption because what do those power holders want? They want those people to do nothing at all. To not question, to not ask, to not talk to them. So even that we have to understand is powerful, not only because it involves dialogue, negotiation and engagement, but because it is starting to, in a small way, challenge the status quo. Yeah. Mel, Duncan. So in order to help create civic space for nonviolent action and peace building activities in an era of closing space, which is an issue that I think is rightly so gaining a lot more attention in this town and internationally as a fundamental threat to international peace and security, third party civilian protection has been demonstrated to be a very effective tool. So I guess my first question is, what is the theory of change behind unarmed civilian protection and what is a good example of where it's brought positive results? The theory of change is that well-trained, strategic, unarmed civilians can and do protect civilians in violent conflict. There has to be the direct engagement with civil society. We only go at the invitation of local civil society and it's a very symbiotic kind of relationship. In terms of an example, and listening to Anthony and Lola and Shaska, we started working in Sri Lanka about a decade ago. And one morning, a group of mothers living on the east coast of Sri Lanka came to a group of our civilian peacekeepers who were there. Their sons had been kidnapped the night before by the Tamil Tigers and had been taken off to become child soldiers. These moms had had enough. They wanted to go after their boys. So all we did was to help them find where the camp was in the jungle, which was no big secret, and accompany the mothers there where they confronted young leaders of the Tigers who had been child soldiers themselves. And these were guys in their 20s and they said to the moms, you go away, this is no longer your matter. Can you imagine telling a mom whose son had been kidnapped the night before, this is no longer your matter? The moms stood firm. All we did was to stand firm with them. Someone from Germany, there was someone from Pakistan, someone from Columbia, Canada. And so the young leaders knew that this would be an international incident. So they called for their superiors who came out about 12 hours later. And because it's our business to communicate with all the armed actors and to do that on an ongoing basis, they knew who we were. And so over the course of the next day, the 26 boys were released with bus fare. Now, what that led to was a prevention strategy where our teams would just visibly locate at the Hindu temple festivals where the kids were being kidnapped. And by us being there, the Tigers and later on, malicious fighting on behalf of the government who were also kidnapping kids, would stay away. That led to the moms organizing and to fighting against the entire practice of child soldiering. And that led to the prohibition and working with a lot of different actors, but those moms at the grassroots were key. So a jump on that. In 2010 in South Sudan, the Lord's Resistance Army was active in Western Equatoria. Again, kidnapping kids. And these groups, communities were at a loss as to how to protect their children. So a group of Sri Lankans who had been involved in the effort to protect their kids from the Tamil Tigers and from surrogates fighting on behalf of the Sri Lankan government came to South Sudan and worked with communities there on how to keep their kids safe. From that emerged women peacekeeping teams. And while they focused on keeping their kids safe, they also started focusing on other issues. And these women's peacekeeping teams in South Sudan, which now there are 10, are doing things like intervening when girls are being married off at a young age and talking with the mothers about the economic advantage of keeping their girls in school. They're also providing accompaniment because once they're, and this has been brought up earlier in this conference, once there's the violent conflict that gives license to lots of other violence. And so accompanying women to report rapes and then to be involved with them throughout the process. And so these women's peacekeeping teams really have comprehensively looked at violence and how they can confront that from the ground up. And so we can trace part of that at least back to those moms in Sri Lanka a decade ago. So I mean, that's a great example of where nonviolent civic action and unarmed civilian protection come together. Very nice. Is there another good example of that in your repertoire of case studies? Thank you. Sure. I think of Anthony's talk about creating that space for negotiation. And this is an example in South Sudan where there have been ongoing conflicts between cattle herders and agriculturalists. These of course are exacerbated and exploited by geopolitics and by conflicts that have arisen that are about power and greed. So there was a situation in Lake State where the cattle herders had come through. They had started to threaten the crops which is the livelihood of the farmers. And some homes were burned and 76,000 people bled. This is in a very remote area. So over the course of the next month our teams merely provided a safe space for the local chief from the agriculturalists and the local chief from the cattle herders to come together. And that required protective accompaniment for one of the chiefs because he didn't feel comfortable coming into the other area. So we provided that and merely held the space in an old schoolhouse and there are 300 armed guys were sitting outside. And it went on for several days. What resulted that negotiation was an alternative migratory route. Now, we accompanied the process. It took 110 interventions over the next six months to make sure that the migratory route was followed. But the result was the hospital which had been closed reopened and 76,000 people returned home. And it was a matter of just providing that safe ur. It's never safe, but a safer space for negotiations to take place. Thank you. Those are great examples. So it seems the protection or defense of civic space seems to be a theme that's running throughout the conversation so far. So Neil, apropos this issue of closing spaces, USAID has been seeking to come up with some innovative tools and approaches to supporting civil society, including by the Civil Society Innovation Initiative that I mentioned earlier. So in your perspective, talking a little bit about this so-called movement mindset. Movement mindset and what it means for donors. Why are movements and movement actors important from a development in a violence prevention perspective? Thank you for the invitation. It's great to be back at USIP, see many colleagues, friends and mentors in the audience. Just quickly, because we're very eager to get to your questions. From a donor perspective, why are that movement mentality important? I think there are three reasons and then one observation. First of all, in looking at a, as a development agency, our approach to democracy writ large is the importance of inclusion. That in vibrant democracies, we need those to be broad in their concept. And the expression of social movements allows us to move beyond what we would traditionally have called politically active civil society. Those often capital based, organized official NGOs are very well established groups to a different movement which are very dynamic, broad based mass organizations to some extent, or through political parties or through the church or through labor unions. We do that, but as the Arab Spring told us, there's much more broad based groups out there and they often tap into groups that are historically marginalized from the political or economic life of the country. So the promise of working as more of a movement mindset is to make those democracies more inclusive by tapping into those mobilized constituencies. And we have examples in each of these cases. From a state building perspective, closely related to peace building is that mass movements allow us to support progressive movements for change that activate large coalitions of folks and that is from a donor perspective when if we wanted to cut a grant to everybody who was interested or moved by working, we couldn't operate. We would all spend already too much time in that retail basis, but being able to tap large coalitions often by basically supporting their voice or through policy dialogue as well as assistance of the type that Lola mentioned is important from a state building society, a state building perspective. The third area I think and most important to this group is from a peace building perspective in that the dynamics of inclusion and state building are foundational to peace building approaches because if you think about formal peace accords, many of them when they are successful, it's because they've been rooted deeply in those society that they've brought along not only the track one, track two, track one and a half and perhaps track three approaches that they are sustained over longer periods of time less susceptible to rollback. And now observing in this last decade, very different from the 1990s where there was an exuberance at Euphoria about transitions to democratic societies from authoritarian to follow the Berlin Wall and peace building and state building marching along a path. I think failure to root those changes more deeply in society is in part responsible for a lot of the rollback and where the role of mass movements have helped to serve as a break against that in increasingly difficult environments. The last observation I would make is just from a problem solving perspective, when we worked at CMM, we really adopted the whole sale, the idea of a systems approach. I see Rob, I don't know if he was instructive in a lot of that work and a lot of the work that you all do. It's interesting to think about mass movements as a horizontal organization that works in that fashion to solve problems where in official and we're often working vertically, we are siloed organizations, we are interest based and functionally divided by government, by geography, by technical specialty and thinking about the way we solve a problem there's an advantage of the way broad coalitions of groups work at it and Rob's, I'm sorry, Anthony's reference to coalitions of coalitions to build social change, I think, is interesting from a kind of a problem solving. The last thing, I just wanted to comment since I went last about some of the language that was used here that I wanted to take away. I love what Lamola said, like I'm sorry that we make the president uncomfortable but that's my job. And so peace building, state building, oftentimes if you're working about change that threatens entrenched interests, our job is going to make people uncomfortable and we have to reconcile that, particularly if you're representative of an arm of the US government. And Chaska's noting that engagement itself is disruptive to that order, I think is really interesting from an observation but also it makes available to citizens as you suggest that that simple act of engagement that is empowering. Just from an observation. Before we open it up for the audience so apropos being a branch or wing of the US government what does it mean to effectively support movements and movement actors without that fundamental risk of undermining their local authenticity, legitimacy, what can be done by outside actors and notably USAID without hurting them? So this is a real challenge in terms of the question about maybe to boil it down should a group that's working for progressive social change in a country abroad except US money. And I think the default from our possession is we let that decision rest with the organization itself doesn't want according to its mandate but that kind of ignores the power imbalance and the fact that we may be the owner only game in town that there really isn't in a choice there's money that we might be the only resource in the system. Also one of the attributes of large movements is their dynamism. And of the many ways we describe our business model dynamic is rarely used to put it lightly. So in some ways some of the difficulty is just keeping up with these dynamic fluid environments. This is more and more at the center of our discussions about kind of the next generation of aid reforms is we have made I think tremendous advances with the help of a lot of people in this room about our analytical capacity to get the common operating picture right or more closely. We can do so much more largely by bringing those models to the local level so it's not our picture but actually the actors themselves. But having done that we need to be able to act on what we see or support those who are acting on what they see and it's building the flexibility. I think that's the greatest challenge. That's beyond before you get to the issue of partner betting results, whose results, who's the boss all of those questions are even that much more complicated by a broad disperse dynamic and organic movement. So I don't know that's a satisfying answer but that's the terrain that we're in when we talk about social movements. I think there are lessons learned some of the analytical work that we've done suggests that the politically active civil society that we're generally accustomed to working with does not exist separately from the mass movements that we see and in fact they permeate each other and that much of the lessons that we learned before are applicable but we need to be open to new ways, new operating model. The last thing I'll say is this civil society initiative and the innovation hubs are a test of this new model where we in essence said in closing space, what are some of the strategies that groups should bring to bear and let civil society bring those solutions forward, organize themselves into six regional hubs and then let them decide and we've incredibly with I think some maybe flying under the radar somewhat from Congress have said let this incubation period happen but we see these ultimately as sources of peer support, of peer learning, of coalition building and of generation of ideas that's then are bankable by resource partners not combined to government donors but philanthropics, the private sector that's the vision of it but we've had to stand apart and I think probably the last thing to say is that working with mass movements often will mean standing apart, working through other donors, working through collectives, working at arm's length for just the reasons you suggest of not wanting to undermine the legitimacy of a locally grown movement. Great, thank you very much. So we've left, I think the table's been properly set for a good conversation, we left about 15 minutes so I'm gonna hand over my mic and then please identify yourself and keep your questions really short, thanks. Najla Shergi from the Crock School of Peace Studies University of San Diego, thank you for a wonderful panel, a great conversation and Maria thank you for bringing the social movements into this conversation because you raised it last year when we were talking about civil society organizations. I have a serious concern and an issue that I'm sure all of you have thought about but was not reflected, what do we do when publics are polarized, when you have Ukraine and Iraq and Turkey and Brazil where the social movements, there's not one social movement against the government, there are polarized publics with competing agendas and how does social movement and peace building come together or not in such context and what experiences do we have, how do we deal with that? Or maybe take two more and then we'll do them around. So middle here. Chip House from the Alliance for Peace Building and I thought Maria the way you teed it up and the way Anthony then took it from there and then what Mel added left me with an interesting question that I don't have an answer for. When Anthony, you talked about the 80s and I think back to the 60s when I was at my most disruptive, I don't think I was thinking much about how you use these movements to open negotiating space and I think that's an empirical question. What data do we have about how these kinds of movements actually open up space for deeper dialogue to produce enduring lasting non momentary change and I really don't know the answer. One more. Why don't we go in the very far back right? Hi, I'm Annie Paulson and I'm particularly interested in the intersection of peace building and the arts and I'm wondering in your work in nonviolent resistant movements, have you seen the arts used? And I mean that broadly, music, visual art, storytelling, literature, anything. How have you seen it be useful? What potential might it have? Let me tackle the first two questions I think. So it was polarized publics and the second one was about opening spaces. All the classic cases of civil resistance had polarized publics. India was, British ruled India was deeply polarized and became more polarized. America before the civil rights movement was and continues to be deeply polarized on racial issues and economic justice issues. So it's not like that's a new topic. It's a continuing condition under which civil resistance has to build broader coalitions across society. That's the first domain of negotiation I was talking about. Reaching out to the publics that may not be on the same page, may not realize that they have a common cause, may be part of the problem, may become more part of the problem as things go on to change their minds. So it cannot be about only espousing one view. It has to be about going broad and reaching out to people who disagree with each other and finding ways to bring them into a common program of action for a better society for all. That sounds easy as I articulated but it is in fact the most difficult task of possibly the most difficult task of nonviolent movements. Maria's book is just full of all those cases but then when you look deep into the cases and I know you did the case studies and did the quantitative stuff but as you get into the details of all the cases there are moments at which the crisis created by the movement is so great that the powers that be if they're the targets then invite some leadership to participate in talks about a transition and in exchange there's going to be a diminishment of the direct action is often the initial bargain that they're looking for but then that morphs into a much more complex agenda. Solidarity began helping to govern, right? When Jaruzelski opened that door they were ready to jump in which is in stark contrast to shall we say activists that I've come to know in the last 10 years who say we don't want to get to the table we just want to disrupt. Getting to the table for me is always part of the goal. It was part of the way I was educated in social work school when they said well you activists really need to know how to talk to authority so that they change the way they govern, right? So for me there are just so many cases and I think all of the cases that result in dramatic change when you look carefully there really was no single dramatic change there were negotiated changes along the way even if there is a dramatic event like the departure of Marcos or the Duvaliers, et cetera. There are much more attenuated processes that follow and proceed those dramatic events. I'll stop there. Yeah, that's great. If anyone else has any questions I can talk to our city like that. Yeah. Well I'll just, I'll go ahead. I think that in our situation in Nigeria it's been a very polarized issue of all these girls being kidnapped. They stand for an umbrella around the larger problems with Boko Haram and many people don't believe Boko Haram really exists in the country. Yes, that's true. They believe that Boko Haram is a political tool that was used by one party against the former president, good luck Jonathan. And so our job has been to steadily challenge that and every day you can even go on Twitter. You'll still hear people talking about this and then you have this sector of people who say oh, Nigeria is a failed state of Biafrans. And half these people who are talking about we should become, you know, the Biafrans state should be instituted weren't even alive during the Nigeria civil war. So I'm like, do you really understand the implications of this? But when it comes down to it we have to go through the channel of finding common ground and that's the only way to break through the chatter is to talk about the fact that economic issues which is plaguing everyone in the country is a unifying common ground to stand on. And so we build our conversations around the issues of economics, the issue of gender rights which speaks to the I think the ladies conversation around the arts is visualizing and being having dramatic expressions of what it means when a girl or a woman is in trouble. These are, this is an issue that affects everybody in the country. And so we start to get more people to buy into, well this is not just about anti-government we're not anti-government, I keep telling people we're not anti-government, I'm pro-Africans. And that's the bottom line is I want to see all of us thrive but how do we do that is by bringing everyone who may not believe in whether or not these Chiba girls or everybody else that has been kidnapped by Boko Ram really happened is to say, you have a sister. How do you feel about her rights? How do you feel about her being gone? How do you feel about this? How do you feel about standing in line for long hours to buy petrol as an all producing country? It's making sure that there are radio conversations that are happening, it's actually having, there's a photo exhibit that is traveling, it's called, I think it's called Take Me Off Mute. It's dramatizing and photographs of not only these girls but mothers who have lost daughters as well as lists of names of people who have been killed. It's when you visually put it in their faces to say this is happening, this is true then you are able to tap into the compassionate side of people and I know this may sound all touchy-feely but it's true, we're emotional beings and when we can strike a chord on what your issue is, what your concern is, then it creates the opening for dialogue, then it creates the place space where the president of Nigeria is inviting activists who've been protesting or sitting, having sit-ins outside his office for the last 700 and something days. That's when we're able to get to the table and it's important to get to the table. We need the state to be able to have sustainable lasting change but it has to start with the people recognizing that things have to change and we cannot stay silent, we can't act as though the problems are so great, where do we start from? There's always a simple step we can take and our position is the simple step is to get informed, is to get educated, is to get organized and to have a plan of how we're going to proceed on multiple levels. It's not just direct action, it is civic engagement on Twitter, educating people. We design images that replicate some corruption scenes that people take for granted are actually corruption. It's how do you use multiple levels visually, orally and physically, how do you show people that you have a role to play and you can't just sit on the sidelines and expect somebody else to do the work for you? And just really, really quickly on the arts one. I will note that that was a great example. We do have here at USIP an arts and culture forum and the focus is on integrating the arts in all of our peace building activities both out in the field and here at headquarters. So in terms of the role of storytelling, music and nonviolent movements. I mean, it's huge, it's profound and what pulls the emotions off in most people helps maintain strength and solidarity when you're facing repression. So all these things, for that reason, we're taking the arts here at USIP notably a lot more seriously. So three more questions? Going back to the first and second questions which are related to each other. In the final analysis, we all agree that violent conflict for whatever reason is extremely debilitating to human life, to societies, to countries, to the environment. At the very basis, and I'm not saying that this is the solution, but when you have a society where you have two sides for example that are extremely polarized, even if they are engaged in nonviolent action, the two sides, it's far much better that they're engaged in a nonviolent struggle for whatever are their grievances or their goals than if they take up arms. And I'm giving, I mean it's an extreme, but I can give an example. For example in Thailand where you have the society deeply polarized the division between the so-called red shirts and the yellow shirts and that's very complex, but so it's a superficial division even though that's how they identify themselves. But they were engaged one could say in nonviolent struggle, both sides, for political power, for basic human rights for a lot of different things. And in the end there was a military coup though Thailand has a long history of military coups like every few years there's a military coup so it was not something new. But had one of those sides taken up arms and the other side would probably have taken up arms there could be right now a violent civil war going on in Thailand with all the horrific repercussions of any civil war as we know that is happening in other parts of the world. So at least, I mean in the final analysis, at least if people are staying nonviolent that hopefully the long-term outcomes are better than if they were to take their grievances to the level of violent conflict. Thank you. So three more questions. We have a few more minutes than I thought actually which is exciting. So you in the blue. Adam Zeeman's from the Institute of Multitrack Diplomacy. My question is in regard to the concept of inclusion and some of the risks of taking an inclusion approach. The idea that perhaps that we are actually in some instances possibly imposing inclusion on societies that are not prepared for that type of inclusion. So one of my questions is what would best practices look like in an attempt to include and particularly what could be some of the steps for physically protecting people who are attempting to include. Great. In the black in the back. Thanks. This is Dilshan from World Vision International peace building. My question is I love moments. Working and loving them continuously. Starting from Nepal was there. The gentleman was speaking there from Nepal to DRC to Columbia. One of the key things that we have seen is that movements start very strongly, non-violently. But the issue is as he also said like how long can they hold on till they get the recognition. Because some of the key movements, strongest movements are not recognized. They are not registered under governments. They are not legalized. The donors don't see them as recognized bodies to get funds. They cannot be co-leads, leads or co-leads or I can't call it anything. So and they can't continue like that forever. They are young people, young blood. So there is a threshold until they break up. So yeah, thanks. So what can we do and what can we do for that? So what can be done to sustain support sustainable movement development? Recognize them as they are. Before they become organizations and everything gets destroyed. Got it. Let's see, how about here? Hi, I'm Show coming from the Center for Justice and Peace Building at Eastern Mennon University. I'd like to ask the panelists to say a little bit more about local movements having more power through the day to day, you know, growing their own food, making their own clothing and, you know, the counseling for mental well-being that they do among each other. Isn't that critical for the resilience and for the long-term viability of all these movements around the world? So what Mahatma Gandhi referred to as the constructive program is exactly what you're talking about. And deep democracy and things like that. Yeah, so those are three. So the inclusion best practices and perhaps linked to physical protection, movement sustainability and constructive program. I was reading yesterday something that reminded me of a fundamental truth that I think we've ignored for a long time. History books are all about divisions in humanity, but pluralist societies are really the norm in human history. And we have forgotten, because of the last few decades of violent conflict, that people live together with differences. So when we talk about societies that aren't ready for inclusion, there's more layers to that. They have become disused or they've become habituated to separation or polarized, whereas they might have to reclaim a legacy of inclusivity that may be reclaimable. I'll stop there. I can speak a little bit about the self-care in your mind while you're movement building and peace building. It's what we've done in our work with Bring Back Our Girls, it's really heavy. And we've seen a lot of people fall out from the movement to say, I'm just exhausted. I'm mentally drained, how do we hang on? And one of the things we've done is actually built like a virtual circle of support. And it's a periodic check-in to make sure that we are all okay. It's every month. It's for the people in Nigeria, they do it physically at the Unity Fountain once a month. But for those of us who are in the UK, in the US, and everywhere else, it's virtual. Because it's very important. Your mind, it's always a flood of negativity and we have to understand and ground ourselves in the why. Why are we doing this? Why did we come together? What do we hope for the future? And hope is a theme that we've really started emphasizing is what is your hope? What is your hope for this month? I'm giving ourselves tangible things to strive for. So it's not just a hope that, oh, we want these girls to come back. No, but for the next month, what is my hope? What do I need to do for myself? What do I need to do for my community? But always recognizing if you're not able to stand strong, you're not helpful to anybody. So I, you know, and so I'm not of the school of you need to die for the cause. Yes, that's cool. But you all, I'm just saying real talk. You could go down that route of sacrificing yourself, but if you have so much to give, why sacrifice yourself? Why not strengthen yourself emotionally? The economics of supporting each other. We don't grow our own food or make our own clothes, but what we do is we support each other's organizations and making sure their work is given visibility. So we are in the United States. We have a campaign to help a school in a bag with one of our co-organizations in Nigeria. And while they're struggling for support, financial support. So what we do is we fundraise on their behalf. While we're still fundraising for ourselves, but it's to show that you have support not just in your immediate network, but it's the opportunity to also have a larger, have a larger visibility, but actual larger supporters for your organization and your initiatives. And that goes a very long way. So it may not be what Gandhi advocated, you know, in the sense of growing your own clothes and growing your own food, but today programs, organizations and institutions are our food and our clothing and our shelter. So that's how we support each other. Let's go down quickly. A couple comments on the second and third question. So I mean, there is this whole very vibrant scholarship on basically self-empowerment, a community empowerment, people's empowerment and using the constructive program concept that was developed by Gandhi. And then there's this other notion that's equally important that we're just starting to start to understand in our field of nonviolent resistance, which is everyday acts of resistance, and which can include the simple things of taking some control in your community. And so there's an overlap. But when people are marginalized, perhaps, I mean, one of the most basic elements of their resistance is to try to change their own day-to-day situation because nobody else cares and nobody else is going to do it. So that is part of the beginning of their campaign or movement. And there's so many examples that would be related to what we're talking about today that involve dialogue and negotiation and transformation of conflict. One can see it in each part of the world. So if you're interested in that, we can certainly talk with you afterwards to point you to some interesting scholars and cases. Then the notion of how can movements keep going and how to sustain them? I mean, again, if one looks at movements that have been going on for a long time, and I don't know what our colleague had in mind of a movement that like was sort of falling apart or what you've witnessed, but no matter when we're trying to tackle some sort of an oppression or injustice, the change takes a while. We may have something very short term like Mohudi did in Mombasa, which was to address the constituency development fund project in the community. But their overall focus was on strengthening human rights and fighting poverty in the slums. So that small project, which in of itself was not small at all, was one step. And so breaking things down is a way that movements sustain themselves. They have their long-term vision, but then they have the short-term goals. So even if one were to look at the six-step audit that Mohudi developed to go back to that example, each step was a victory that built upon and sustained people to go to the next step. So that building in the sense that we can do something, we're able, I mean, things happen, it's not just abstract, it's not hopeless, again, these intangible notions. So there's a lot that we can learn from these sustained efforts, and it's not easy. As you said, it's definitely very difficult, but it can be done. Relating to the question about inclusive processes and then the protection of people who choose to be involved. In Mindanao, in 2009, there was a ceasefire that was brokered by the Malaysians between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government of the Philippines. In that case, Nonviolent Peace Force and two local groups were given direct responsibility for the civilian protection component of that ceasefire mechanism. That meant for four years, teams reported, monitored, verified, and intervened on breaches on a daily basis, and had to report on a daily basis. More significantly, we trained 300 local people who were located throughout the island, setting up a network where they monitored, verified, reported, and intervened on breaches of civilian protection. The network provided protection, and so if there was threats, other people could, there was early warning, early response mechanism that was employed so that people could be deployed for each other's benefit and for protection. That kind of grassroots monitoring of the ceasefire mechanism played a major role in the comprehensive peace agreement that was signed a little over two years ago. Now, that's fragile at this moment, but it's still been holding and still moving more or less in the right direction. That model right now is being replicated in Myanmar. Neal, do you want to have any last reflections before we, unfortunately, want to bring this great conversation to the folks? Can I answer that? No, I think I could say yes. No, you're gonna say yes. I guess what I want to do is, I guess two things. On the issue of inclusion and sustainability, I think from the question I said, are there any kind of do-no-harm concerns about either inclusion that would put people at risk, or is there an imposition of an external agenda, which I think we really need to take into account as donors. I kind of come from the other side, is that we have long been criticism for the narrowness of our engagements, and that working with the same group over and over again. So I don't think we reach that next generation of best practices or do-no-harm concerns. We're much more guided by the fact that who has the greatest to gain by inclusion in a broad functional democracy system, and we've seen it, somebody's been working for a while on this, there are issues on the table now that didn't exist. The incredible access and flowering of civil society groups, human rights groups, devoted to gender equality, to LGTBI rights, to the inclusion of youth, have opened up and worked together with broad reform coalitions, and so I think we're still on that side of the curve, not to say that we also face the very real problem of whose agenda is this, so I really take the point, but I also feel like we are gearing up to sort of work more broadly across that. In terms of sustainability, just to endorse what was said, I wanted to get back to just one point from the previous round about polarization, and I thought agreeing with what Anthony said, that many of the movements have been successful in some of the most polarized. Situations, but we often find for folks that are locked in conflict and polarized settings, that there is a weariness and a feeling that they're stuck, and I think one of the things that we've done successfully is try to cross-fertilize and bring together people with different experiences from one region to another, and that's part of the thinking behind the civil society innovation hubs, it's part of the reason behind many donor platforms that come together now, whether that's the open government platform or the effective institutions, I'm sorry, the open government partnership or the effective institutions platform is that when people are stuck in major public service reform or anti-corruption, they keep continuing to mine their own history or the history of their neighbors and it's not wielding solutions, so they have to look even more broadly to someone else's experience that perhaps were insight. It's also related to, I think, the question on the arts, which is that the traditional disciplines of economics, political science have not yielded solutions, and opening the creativity, the ability to tap the human spirit through arts, and just for an example, many here might be familiar with the work of the Global Arts Corps that does this on an ongoing basis, it is based on the experience of the translators from the South African Truth and Justice Commission, dramatized and then taken on the road to places like the Balkans or to Northern Ireland, and it allows communities there to consider the conflict in their own situations but from a distance as seen through the experience of what is a dramatic presentation of the South Africa case, and I thought that was very current, very accessible and deals with the arts which also has the potential to open up new lines of thinking. Thanks very much to the panelists for really teasing out the points of nexus between nonviolent movements, peace building and unarmed civilian protection. I feel we could have gone on for six more hours but that's unfortunately not possible. So, and thank you all for participating in Linwood, you have the final word. Thank you, Maria, and thank you panelists for this session. I've been here three years, I've never seen this room packed the way it is, and that's clearly a result of this issue. These great panelists and the work that I'm sure you are all interested in doing and propagating throughout, so I wanna thank you. And because it's so warm here, I wanna tell you now that we're breaking for lunch. A floor below us is called the Great Hall. There are tables of 11 that are situated in that central open space. Behind or underneath the portico is where your lunches are situated, so please break for lunch. The next sessions, I will begin at 1.45. Thank you.