 Good morning everyone. My name is Carla Copel and I'm one of the Vice Presidents here with the United States Institute of Peace. As I hope most of you know, since you're standing in our building, the United States Institute of Peace was founded by Congress over 30 years ago and is committed to the proposition that peace is possible, practical, and cost-effective. Whether you're with us in the room, watching us online, following us on our Twitter feed at hashtag PeoplePowerPeace, which I'm told is all one word, or tweeting about us in the course of this event. We're really happy to have you here with us this morning for what I think will be a very exciting conversation. I speak for all of us at USIP in telling you that we are both pleased and proud to be organizing this conversation in partnership with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and the Alliance for Peace Building and it connects with our broader nonviolent action program as well as the working group we're working on with Alliance for Peace Building and community of practice around nonviolent action and peace building. I myself am excited to be able to participate in the conversation for a number of reasons. First of all, I lead the Center for Applied Conflict Transformation here at USIP at the Institute and this conversation itself will situate, consider, and relate the work around civil resistance with the work focused on peace building within the broader conflict transformation field. So it really is a service to the conversations that we and I have every day. I also look forward to the discussion because it truly brings together leading scholars with some of the foremost practitioners from around the world in the peace building and civil resistance field. And it's quite unique to have that combination of voices come together to have an insightful dialogue. Finally, I really look forward to reflecting back on my own interactions. And as I was looking at the papers that have come out around this conversation and the work that's been undertaken by this team, it made me think back to the work that I did a couple of decades ago talking with members of the African National Congress as they were talking about how to work within an opposition movement and then how to translate that movement into durable gains for their society and for their governance. When I was working in Liberia with women leaders from the Mano River Women's Peace Network who helped bring it into the conflict and thought a lot about how they built on that, how they could build on that achievement to deliver long term for the people of Liberia, particularly its women. And the challenges and struggles and tensions that they felt within their own struggles moving forward. So in sum, I look forward to learning a lot. Within US Institute of Peace, our work around nonviolent action has been a growing area of emphasis for us over the past couple of years. It is People Powered by Maria Stefan, an expert in the field whose leadership I really respect tremendously and I really enjoy working with her every day on this topic and learn from her every day. The program that she leads has grown and is focused on both undertaking and fostering research into civil resistance efforts and their implications for peace building as well as really striving to help shape the practices that foster nonviolent action to prevent violent conflict and to promote conflict resolution. They've just released a series of forthcoming reports that you'll hear something about this morning that are really interesting. They also have recently placed online in partnership with the Academy's Global Campus and American Friends, a couple of courses on nonviolent resistance that I encourage you all to take a look at as well. Very interesting retrospective and analysis of nonviolence and rich with examples from around the world. With that, I'm going to cede the floor to Maria and a tremendously smart group of experts and I look forward to sharing with all of you a conversation that I know will be rich and lively. So thank you very much for joining us and take it away Maria. Thanks very much Carla and let me add my welcome to everybody who's here in the audience and participating in today's event via live webcast and just a reminder that the hashtag for today's event is People Power Peace. So please do your thing on Twitter everyone. I would also like to add my thank you to the two co-sponsors for today's event, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and the Alliance for Peace Building. It's been a real pleasure working with them on this event and also on the Alliance for Peace Building Working Group on Nonviolent Action and Peace Building which is really trying to bring together two communities, perspectives and approaches that have been siloed and not communicating with each other for a very long time. So it's been a pleasure working with both organizations and I'm just really excited to kick off a conversation this morning about the nexus of nonviolent resistance in peace building and really the central question that we're looking at today is how can dialogue based approaches like negotiation, mediation, facilitation, dialogue together with collective action approaches, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, vigils, how can these two approaches and perspectives come together to transform conflicts? And we'll look at some specific examples from around the world where these two approaches have been complementary and where they've been less than complementary. And then before we open the conversation with you all we're going to preview a new USIP tool for practitioners that animates the synergies between nonviolent action and peace building. And just to emphasize Carlos' point about our online courses, kudos to the global campus team here at USIP who have worked really hard to put out two online courses that relate to today's topic. One is called civil resistance and the dynamics of nonviolent movements and the other which we created in partnership with AFSC is 100 years of quiet diplomacy, nonviolent resistance and peace building. So I encourage you all to check those out. And now let me very briefly introduce today's conversation igniters who are bringing an academic practitioner and activist perspective to bear on the topic of people power and peace building. Their full bios I should note are in the program for today. So first, Veronique Doudouay is program director for conflict transformation research at the Berghof Institute in Berlin where she manages research on liberation movements, negotiations, inclusive transitions, post-war governance and civil resistance. She recently edited the book civil resistance and conflict transformation transitions from armed to nonviolent struggles and is the author of the ICNC report which you all should have received outside powering to peace integrated civil resistance and peace building strategies. And then we have Jitman Basnet who is a human rights lawyer and journalist. Jitman has been working for human rights and transitional justice in Nepal for over 16 years. He was kidnapped and tortured by both Maoist rebels and government forces and in 2004 Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience and he's with us today due to both national and international pressure demanding his release. Next we have Anthony Juanice St. John who is an associate professor at the School of International Service at American University. He researches international negotiation and mediation and conducts advanced negotiations, mediations and conflict resolution trainings for U.S. military and civilian agencies, international organizations and NGOs. And he together with Noah Rosen are the co-authors of the Hot Off the Press, USIPceWorks report Negotiating Civil Resistance which is also available outside. And finally Abdullah Handaoui is an Egyptian activist and political researcher. While living in Egypt he was involved in a number of social movements including the popular revolution of 2011. He's worked for different political, governmental and non-governmental entities focusing on the Middle East and North Africa and he's currently working with us here at USIP as part of the nonviolent action team. So we have a great lineup to start the conversation today. So I'm going to begin with Veronique who I do have a copy of your special report I might as well flag it for everyone whose ICNC special report Powering to Peace has an interesting quote at the beginning. You write in the report Veronique that let's see what's it where's the code although civil resistance and peace building both practical strategies and fields of inquiry share a common commitment to social change and increase justice through peaceful means they are rooted in distinct approaches to conflict transformation. So can you explain what those distinct approaches are? Sure I will well first of all many thanks for the invitation it's a it's a great pleasure and honor to be here talking about this work that has been a long time in the making. If I can have the first slide that I had prepared right so this is one of the tables that you will find in the report which tries to highlight on the one hand the similarities between civil resistance and peace building and on the other hand the main areas of divergence between these two fields or to approaches to conflict intervention conflict transformation. So in terms of the commonalities I would say that civil resistance and peace building both share a commitment to addressing the root causes of conflict transforming asymmetric or broken relationships in order to build a long lasting peace with justice and also the conviction that these long term peace with justice can only be achieved by peaceful means without the use of physical force. So I would say they share this joint commitment which I would say is the essence of conflict transformation but they are rooted in different ethical orientations, different diagnosis on what are the primary causes of conflict and they tend to use different methods in order to prosecute conflict or to mitigate conflict. So if I start with peace building which is like the right hand column peace building methods that I'm sure I'm all very familiar with given the work of USIP and many of the work that visitors here are conducting I would in the report I adopt a very broad and encompassing understanding of peace building as methods that can be used before, during and after violence but their emphasis really is on the search for win-win solutions and constructive relationships and they promote dialogue, negotiation, reconciliation, institution building and reform. But I would say that one of the main limitations is that they don't always offer effective solutions for conflicts that are characterized by acute power asymmetries. So on the other hand civil resistance or nonviolent resistance is primarily used by grassroots movements that are seeking to redress injustice, redress inequality. So they primarily focus on addressing structural violence and they do that by using methods that intensify conflict in a way while trying to reduce or oppose the use of violence. Examples include protests, civil disobedience strikes and so forth and also self-organizing and constructive forms of resistance. I would say they can also be employed in different stages of conflict. One of the weaknesses of civil resistance is that because it's used unilaterally by one party to the conflict it does not always offer effective means to reach win-win solutions and it may sometimes exacerbate the level of adversity and polarization and it might also lead to violence by pro-status co-forces. So I would say the essence of the report is that both of these tools and fields need each other even though they often don't realize it and there's been quite a divide between these two communities which I think the report and this panel is trying to address by looking at areas of complementarity. So what the report also does is that it's looking at different stages or different moments in conflict transformation where these approaches can come together and reinforce each other. If I can just have the other slide. Yes, this is using a model that has been designed by Adam Kerl, a Quaker practitioner activist scholar in the early 70s and I use this model to show in a fairly simplistic manner the different moments in which civil resistance and peace building can come together in conflicts where transformation has to happen by increasing the level of awareness by the parties that there is a need for social change and also where conflict transformation has to pass through the changing of power asymmetries so that the parties can talk to each other in a relation of equals and so these four moments are firstly the moment of conscientization and awakening for the need for change. The second stage is the one of conflict intensification by nonviolent means and violence prevention and the third stage is the one where these change in power relations enables parties to come together and to negotiate through bargaining mechanisms the new types of relationship and structural reforms and then the last stage is the stage of actual social and political transformation for the bargaining outcomes to be institutionalized and put into practice and where I would say civil resistance remains necessary there's often the assumption that civil resistance helps parties to negotiate and then there's no longer a need for popular grassroots mobilization and the report tries to show how mobilization remains very much necessary in a post-settlement stage to make sure that the peace dividends actually are delivered to the different strands of society. Thanks very neat that's incredibly helpful to lay out the relationship and how nonviolent action and and peace building relate on the conflict spectrum to take it to a concrete example you've done extensive research on and even training related to the conflict in Nepal and as we think about the various phases of that conflict including the period before during and after the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement in 2006 how should we think about the relationship between nonviolent resistance and peace building? Well in the report I used the example of Nepal to illustrate two of these moments of these two approaches coming together so the first one is exactly looking at what happened in 2006 and the way in which the combined mobilization and pressure by grassroots activists or position parties as well as the Maoists that decided to lay down their arms and to join peaceful protests into what became a people power revolution in 2006 how this pressure helped to force the king to the negotiation table and I think many activists that I spoke to said that that negotiation would not have been possible without that force from the street and there had been 10 years of arm struggle by the Maoists and that arm struggle did not manage to convince the monarchy to negotiate a structural change in society and that revolution managed to achieve that and then in the report I also look at another moment of mobilization and complementarity which is the current stage in which Nepal is trying to come to terms with the legacy of past violence is trying to come to terms with implementing a new constitution that addresses some of the needs that marginalized communities had raised but that is very slow in implementing these reforms and one can see a number of examples of communities that either were historically marginalized or that have become marginalized by the conflict like victims or like even ex combatants and child soldiers taking down to the streets and using different methods of nonviolent mobilization to demand the full implementation of these top-down mechanisms that the peace building process has introduced like truth commission like like yeah peace infrastructures and and the reforms that have been promised in the constitution and and how beyond the headlines of of ethnic riots and so forth they are actually a number of non-valued movements that are trying to mobilize I would say the the one challenge is that they're not joining forces these campaigns are happening rather sporadically and I think this is also where the peace building methods of negotiation and dialogue can help these different groups build coalitions and and and join forces to demand the changes that are still to happen. Great thank you so much Varanik. Jitman this topic is obviously very real for you you were kidnapped tortured held in Communicado by both government and opposition forces while you were advocating for human rights and democracy in Nepal and thinking about kind of how Varanik described the relationship between the two how did that work in practice on the ground how did you experience the relationship between nonviolent action and peace building? Well thank you for the question. It's very explained you know so many issues still it's still you know we are struggling now when king took power control whole entire you know system he control he dissolved parliament kicked out the prime minister and political parties they tried to you know protest but didn't get enough support from the from the people. So the people were witnessing how political party party would would do. A leader you know the people from different groups you know teachers students farmers and all areas they joined in the protest and supported to the political parties and that was that helped the transformation you know change the situation political situation. There's a combination of nonviolent you know action and peace building definitely unfortunately some violent also but you know I would say nonviolent that has the most powerful strength you know that helped to overthrow the monarch from Nepal and that you know and I mean nonviolent movement action was able able to bring the the most combatants party most force to bring the table to discuss and also brought the political parties to the table and at the end there was 12 point agreement that happened in New Delhi and that was a platform of working together political parties and and civic society movement. So there's a great combination I experienced we experienced I saw when I was actually you know when those things were happening I was in detail in the military barracks directly I couldn't involve I mean physically in the protest but you know our soul mind was with them. The prior to begin begin the peaceful giant nonviolent movement that started in 2000 April 2005 afterwards you know prior than that I was involved in various other you know strategies like writing articles you know protesting supporting two victims you know as a lawyer so I was not directly in 24 19 days people's movement we called Janandulun in Nepal and that time I was outside of country because of threats continued threats also we were organizing you know various types of nonviolent you know protest in in in exile so supporting to the ground writing articles supplying you know news materials so there's a great combination of you know nonviolent moments and peace buildings there's another side of great effort from the people political parties coming together overthrowing the monarch addressing some of the issues people were demanding for a long time because we have five six decades of democratic history in a moment one the initial people's protest to overthrow the family regime we call Rana regime that started in 1951 and the another phase the second Janandulun we call that was in 1990 we people were able to people's power was able to bring the king under the constitution prior than that king was above the constitution it still you know we had to compromise with the king there was agreement king agreed to to be under the constitution there's still so many issues political parties were just the puppet of the king and it still didn't stop the conflict didn't stop the issues of you know democracy and and third Janandulun we call the people's popular uprising in 2005 and six and that was the great experience that you know various tools were used during the during the protest and teachers were teaching their kids in the in the street musicians were you know singing and dancing even you know we could see some foodies today that you know police personnel some military personnel so where they were clapping they were enjoying you know that the dear the people's I mean the the military and police personnel their families were also there in the in the protest you know they couldn't directly you know do anything anything harmful but there were there's other parts that how military some military and police officers they they were involved in killings and torturing and kidnapping that and other part so related to that question thanks very much jitman you mentioned that there have been significant challenges in the post peace accord period including those related to transitional justice and how security forces interact with the civilian populations and you know I should note usip has been facilitating dialogues between the poly police and communities as part of the justice and security dialogue program for a few years now so I guess my question to you is in this kind of fragile context is there still a role for nonviolent action in civil resistance or should the focus mainly be on dialogical approaches is there still a role today for nonviolent resistance definitely it's a great question yeah there's always a space for for dialogue you know dialogue is one means of bringing a different groups together and and you know negotiate but nonviolence resistance is is is a strong method that we we applied and time in again time in again is still so many issues are not you know resolved not solved that's been said earlier you know the political transformation and social and economic changes there were a number of you know inequality and caste based discriminations so many issues are still not solved political parties they agreed to deliver the constitution and you know address the transitional justice you know I'm one of the victims of conflict that time you know still you know we have been dealing with these issues last two years ago UN Human Rights Committee gave a priority we brought the cases to UN Human Rights Committee because we're not Nepal was not the party of the international ICC so we we brought cases to UN Human Rights Committee so it's still that verdict hasn't been you know implemented and there are there are so many victims in the street today we are you know we go to in front of Prime Minister's Palace residence sometime in you know administrative office where we call Singadar bar we protest in front of Chief District Officer's office we organize various you know with sometime we surround the barrack where you know victims were kept and detained is still those those you know issues related to transitional justice is promised by you know by the political parties it clearly says you know all victims and justice would be delivered what is it without justice there wouldn't there wouldn't would be a peace you know peace and justice comes together so justice means is it's not one of the part of justice there should be a meaningful justice as you said earlier so that's a part of the peace process and which is not delivered yet and still many victims I see you know Ram Bandar is a group there are many other groups are working protesting daily base because their family members are disappear and government is not responding where they are and there are many many people were killed and their family family members are still suffering and government and political parties were agreed that time to address these issues it still hasn't been addressed so what what is the often means as a activist I go in front of the relevant you know authority or you know for example prime minister peace ministers or chief executive officer whatever who are who are related to and who are responsible for the justice we go and protest you know use you know meaningful nonviolent resistance tools don't harm others don't kill others but you can address your issues I mean bring your issues you know forcefully you know so far we are using you know bundles you know strikes still people are so so mad with the bundles because so many is misused some some groups are missed you know misused the bundles that's why people are very you know unhappy with that but you know groups victims group are you know organizing bundles hurt all I mean you know Hungary strike once I did Hungary strike you know asking for justice for all victims and I was able how powerful that was that the government was signed signed the agreement but didn't apply that's unfortunate thing so still there is a space for changes there are cost discrimination we need to deal with you know through the education or protest or whatever we could do there are so many means we tools we can we can use so definitely still it's still so many things we need to resolve solve but this building and nonviolent action you know civil disobedience still we are applying to that thank you very much Jim on now Anthony we're back to a slightly more academic perspective on the topic so you and Noah Rosen have written in a great new pieceworks report negotiating civil resistance that the success of nonviolent movements in many ways depends on the quality of the negotiations it maintains so what do you mean by that exactly well to take a prior step since this is academic after all we have to frame it right we've long been interested in the dichotomy between the two fields and friends of mine colleagues of mine here at USIP years ago Dominic Kirally and Darren Cambridge asked me to think about creating a training exercise in negotiation for nonviolent activists for one of the initial courses and that got me thinking about the tensions and the differences and then you asked me to think about this in a more systematic way and put our thoughts down on paper with this report so it made me really aware of the ways in which the two communities of negotiation scholars and practitioners and civil resistors had seized to understand that they were speaking similar languages and came from similar motivations but as we look at the good cases at work like yours it's really empirical that shows what nonviolent social movements have been able to accomplish in a century there's a lot of negotiation there that tends to be sort of hidden under the dramatic action the dramatic the drama of direct action takes the center stage but there are a lot of biographical and autobiographical works narratives that show that at critical moments certainly there are negotiations to take the leverage generated by direct action and get gains from whoever it is you're trying to get gains from government corporate world etc change laws so that was our initial you know observation but we broadened our view and we realized that there are negotiations 360 degrees around civil resistance campaigns and and probably the principal one is about what kind of coalitions you build across society how inclusive is the movement do you have all the right people do you get to the 3.5 percent that some famous authors have written about that was a joke that was funny do you have a broad enough spectrum of people that can also act with some unity and articulate a concrete agenda for change so that's the the first sphere of negotiation the second one is about co-opting the structures of power police military especially in situations of of desired regime change can you take parts of the pillars of support of government and get them acting on behalf of an agenda for change that is well articulated and well led and cohesive and unitary so there's negotiations to do that for sure and then finally it's not a billiard ball sort of image of movement action and change there are negotiations to change government change constitutions change laws affect transitional justice measures and make sure they're implemented and followed up on and change societal norms so that you don't end up with really a repeat of what you had before so we see negotiations in all of those spheres and is there an example from your research that sticks out as being a particularly good case where nonviolent action or nonviolent resistance in peacebuilding negotiations specifically came together you know one of the earlier cases when i was a younger man was about the the polish solidarity movement and how they essentially negotiated their way into power to get general Jaruzelsky and his regime moving out of power and having a democratic movement start to change the way that they you know do politics in post-communist Poland more recently of course the arab spring cases offer us a lot of food for thought and i'm sure Abdullah will get us deeper into the details since he lived it but the Tunisian example seems to have had a lot of dialogical elements a lot of negotiations both among the different civil society elements and movements so that they can create a cohesive agenda across different political parties and ideological tendencies but also with the elements of the prior regime to keep certain things in place in a transitional phase and then begin the task of reforming all the different laws and institutions of the country in contrast there's the egyptian example which which was dramatically successful in getting some important changes moving but then didn't coalesce and Abdullah will talk much more about that great thanks so much anthony thank you so Abdullah you were actually in tuckerier square during the popular uprising that led to the ouster of president mubarak in 2011 and you were also part of negotiations with the security forces during that time and so maybe you can talk us through those experiences and in particular what were you trying to achieve in the negotiations with the security forces you know thanks maria the interesting part is that the more i think about this stage now the more i think that negotiations actually didn't start by the time was set on the table and talked together in fact negotiations started back in 2005 when actually we started taking the streets and i think i mean negotiations are traditionally known to be like between these two different parties and so on of course there are different types of maybe negotiations but for me thinking about this stage now making me think that we started to gain power and leverage when we started taking the streets in 2005 and scaling up our mobilization up until 2011 when the streets started to really react with us and join the crowd however thinking about how did we take these negotiations into the level of sitting on the same table and talking to the generals was a whole different thing because we moved from what we didn't realize as negotiations to what we see and realize as negotiations so when we sat on the table i mean let me go back a little bit for a second now when we when we took the streets and we started to feel that we do have the power in the streets that in fact as much as it empowered us it also scared the military generals and the military council members on the other hand so they felt the need to sit with us and they started to extend the invitations for the first time in their entire life to sit with a bunch of kids as they always like to describe us and so those bunch of kids finally had a voice but those bunch of kids also did not have one voice right we had multiple voices multiple understandings although one goal but different approaches however despite how many different approaches and different ideologies and different groups these social movements were they all rejected sitting on the table at that time during the 18 day revolution in Thierry Square but the only faction that actually sat together was the military council was the Muslim Brotherhood they were shamed for that they were criticized and they quickly backtracked and joined the crowds and they said okay we're not going to be part of that but they have actually met the vice president at the time who was also just the the the chief of the intelligence and military council so it was it was a pre-plexing situation when the 18 day revolution was over when Mubarak stepped down that was a game changer for us we finally realized that well now we actually have power we negotiated without really sitting on the table and we were able to bring them down but here's the catch because civil resistance and peace building slash negotiation and as everyone agrees are distinct we didn't realize that we were setting ourselves in a trap now what i mean by that is that people in civil resistance are different than people in peace building i my personal opinion i still see peace building as still an elitist rational responsible approach right now people in the street do not think this way to give an example people in the street although they do not want to be violent but one little kid like that having one stone throwing it breaking one window he is the star and this is what the media would see and that how would the people react to that so he is the little kid irrational doing that igniting a whole sort of violence throughout the streets and that happens and if the crowd do not self discipline itself which is rare but if that happens if that doesn't happen it's going to be a mess and again do i see the different revolution as a hundred percent non-violent revolution well this is a discussion that we have had through the revolutions what do we mean actually by non-violence self-defense is it non-violence is hunger strike non-violence although i'm harming myself not harming others so there are lots of discussions about that but at the end of the day what we thought that we would self discipline as much as we can we will try to educate the crowd which was a very difficult process at the end of the day we managed to have it the most in the most non-violent possible way when again revolution was over or let's say the uprising was over mobaric step down now we had to switch gears between the civil resistance the revolutionaries these people taking the streets into the rational responsible negotiators who sit in the table and have the demands set and organized and prioritize etc but that was not realistic first we were different we had so many groups each group had its own distinct approach the most organized of them was the muslim brotherhood in fact so they were actually the ones who sat on the table was the military council able to secure an agreement and a deal for the future and they benefited from that to the extent that they reached their their highest position as being a president right and they had the parliament they had the government they had the present office they had everything they thought they could they could get whereas the other bunch of kids who actually started the revolutions being disorganized and are only able to be civil resistance but could not really switch gears to be this rational peace builders or the rational negotiations they they failed to do so when we even had the chance and that's the most important but when we had the chance to sit together on the table was the generals and I was involved in that multiple cases and multiple times there was one time where when we were sitting with the military generals able to talk with them about multiple things what happened is that we found part of our friends who've known us very well they were criticizing us they were shaming us so they were shaming us because we shook hands with people who who have been involved in killing the rest of our friends now I understand that but he doesn't as an important cultural factor that plays in halting negotiations now I thought the negotiations could do something but there are multiple other factors like cultural politics mobilization the ability to organize could play into how these negotiations do get derailed from what they should be great thanks Abdullah so if you could turn the clock back and redo one aspect of the Egyptian revolution what would it be well I wish I had an answer I wish I had a perfect answer I would have been a billionaire probably I would have been the president of Egypt by the time but besides being the president of Egypt I think I think I really would have rethought about how do we approach our relationship with the military council at the time there was great rejection for all the atrocities the military council have been involved with that for many of what the atrocities of the police forces have had but our approach or the or the state of revolutionary approach at the time was to completely exclude and isolate those elements and while I understand that there is frustration against elements of people involved in violence but I think excluding and isolating them does nothing but polarization and antagonizing them against us which is exactly what happened because these people who were isolated and excluded eventually brought themselves together and then backtracked and then attacked us a few months afterwards and because they had the power they had the plans they knew exactly how the bureaucracy in Egypt works they were able to counterattack us in the smartest way and completely destroy us to the extent that most revolutions now are I mean not even the revolution but also the Muslim Brotherhood are either in prison tortured killed or sent to exile and are not able to come back to Egypt and the only ones who are able to run Egypt now and have this great solidarity among themselves what the elements that we thought must be excluded so if there's something that I should what I would have actually done is to work more into the integration and reintegration of those elements instead of just pushing them away from the society it's fascinating thanks Abdullah so on you know this is going to open up for the entire panel and it relates to your last point about inclusion exclusion and this whole idea that in some context civil resistance can possibly pave the way to violence and greater polarization so I want to ask the entire panel actually what is your response to this how do you respond to the critique that you know in certain contexts of a resistance can actually exacerbate divisions go against inclusion of promote polarization is there something legitimate about that go ahead should I start well thanks for the great question I think I would want to give a response in two steps the first step would be to say that in theory when one thinks about civil resistance in the way that here has been conceived but it's founding fathers like Gandhi and Martin Luther King it should provide techniques that would at the same time intensify the level of conflict so that it can be transformed but also try to break the spiral of destructive relations and and lay the groundwork for intergroup reconciliation but what we find is that in most actual nonviolent campaigns and especially when a conflict has already been polarized by years of mistrust or injustice or repression etc it's it's very difficult to convince activists to seek fraternalization right with the other side to to not hate the adversary to to to apply these ground rules like separating the problem we are we are fighting the problem but we don't fight the people or maximizing contacts etc these are very difficult techniques to apply and they would require obviously very long term training preparation planning also to avoid the appearance of radical flanks that might be tempted to use violence and therefore increase polarization and so forth so I think yeah that would be one ingredient and I think also if we think about this interplay between civil resistance and peace building I think it would be important to for nonviolent activists to understand that what they seek might not necessarily be coercion the coercion of the other side because this might lead only to short term solutions but that there's there's there's some value to negotiation accommodation and if I think if if that thinking enters the movement quite early on it will probably be then adapting techniques that will make it possible to have an inclusive accommodation after the struggle great that's really that's a helpful insight any other perspectives on the issue of polarization exclusion and how it relates to nonviolent resistance and essentially how it can be overcome over the course of a movement definitely you know on the ground we we have been seeing sometimes conflicts between the different country I mean the groups you know ethnic groups ethnic violence so we should very careful utilizing tools nonviolent actions or different tools not separating societies so what what is happening in Nepal is you know one group is asking for rights protesting demanding sometime other group they feel that they're you know I mean they're protesting against us you know for example in in Torai in in flatland border with India as the people some political groups people they were protesting you know asking for you know so many other things their demands but targeting to the people from moved from from the hills like wearing the Nepali cap targeting them you know so and and eastern hills we saw you know some ethnic groups rise the limboos and serpas and you know their their issues use the government you know but different groups different ethnic groups living in the same society they are not the target and they are not the main cause of you you know and what we experience is is sometime civil resistance a protest if we are not careful that that could create a division or you know a sectarian violence or ethnic violence and people feel that oh they are targeting us I give an example that they're once upon a time not a long time it still exists that some group of people who have you know some kind of no I mean sharp notes it's called you know the the nose people who have sharp nose oh they are the cause of the regime you know they were the ruler even care you know a porter carrying you know heavy backpack for for surviving and and some group of people they see that he has a certain nose so he should be from the ruling groups regimes there's nothing to do with there's no relation there are people living in the same society they are poor struggling for food you know jobs and different things but somehow they see that oh the group is you know related to the region the nose my nose is sharp so what is the problem with other groups so you know sometime this if we don't apply or we are not careful we apply the you know methods that could create definitely create the division social division so this is a case where the protests if they were targeting a particular ethnic group tribal group religious group it can be highly problematic in terms of potentially exacerbating conflict and promoting violence exactly and that makes you know the civil residents I mean the non-violent actions or people's protest you know less important you know and you know maybe this is a question for Anthony in the conflict resolution field in literature this there is this notion of ripeness which comes from Williams William Zartman and other scholar practitioners the idea that in order to get to a negotiated settlement the situation needs to be ripe and this is often talked about in the context of negotiating techniques how can different negotiating tips techniques promote and pave the way to a negotiated settlement in your view is there is there a relationship between non-violent resistance non-violent action and ripeness and it's kind of the flip side are there cases where non-violent resistance can make a situation unripe for negotiated settlement so ripeness of course is about the psychological readiness as well as the more objective conditions under which people individuals or institutions say now's the time to cut a deal rather than to continue to fight whoever our adversary is non-violent action if it's well crafted if it's broad and legitimate and powerful can of course ripen a social conflict it could it could incline whoever the other party is to say we should stop our violent or harmful actions and think about getting out of this situation so that's I think the fundamental logic of of the big bargain of the fundamental bargain between direct action and negotiation you can over claim however and that's a danger for all movements that have a grievance or a claim that they want that they feel they're entitled to if you over claim then you push the other party so far out and leave them with so few options that they might say we have no option except to try to destroy the movement that's making that demand and I think the Syrian opposition has has been the biggest illustration of that of that problem with with the constant return to the demand that Assad must go and cannot be part of any transition they've essentially you know given Assad little incentive to go which is exactly what would like so so if you over claim you will you will unripe it okay very if you have generated leverage very interesting so you know in many conflict zones it's not just a question of nonviolent you know opposition groups and government forces or corporations you have violent actors extremist elements Boko Haram ISIS for example that are operating you know in the same space as nonviolent movements other armed groups how should we in these contexts whether it's you know northern Nigeria or Afghanistan or Syria how should we think about the relationship between the nonviolent resistance and peace building techniques when it comes to things like countering violent extremism tricky question tricky question in the classic post-cold war civil wars you had armed groups that had a political front or a political party and they would work in clandestine or open coordination with each other think about El Salvador Guatemala situations today are a little more fragmented and you don't have everybody working for the same things think about Abu Sayyaf and the Philippines that has no civil society backing do you need to co-opt Abu Sayyaf in order to get better political change in Mindanao probably not on the other hand in a place like Nigeria where you have so many multiple sub-regional conflicts different groups looking for local satisfaction of local grievances and then you have you know Boko Haram in the north in the northeast etc I guess the tendency would be how do you build the broadest coalition for the most reasonable agenda for change and who's going to be in that permanently and who will exclude themselves from that today there's an event here on Burma's peace process which has you know dozens and dozens of armed groups some of which are small some of which are very large many of whom are not part of their ceasefire agreement that's been in place for some years now and the desire I think is to is for the Institute and for the United States to support a broad inclusion of those groups in a desire to get them to support nonviolent political change and get the government to go along with that so it's pushing them all towards a fairly broad consensus Darnie did you have any thoughts on that? I can add something I'm trying to think of context where there's especially violent extremist groups operating in an area and where the call to support non-violent mobilization is obviously very challenging right and can also be ethically challenging by putting them at risk and on the spot but I do think that such contexts require a mix of simultaneous strategies so on the one hand supporting non-violent mobilization by committees that are affected and whose pressure has to apply towards all sides that are fighting and thinking of examples like peace communities in Colombia or even like in Liberia the women that appealed to the rebel groups as well as to the government to come and sit at the table so there's some pressure that can be applied but by also bringing protection mechanisms right to make sure that that these grassroots activists are not put too much at risk and they can be local mechanisms for protection and monitoring I think and at the same time I think the one has to look at entry points for local engagement with these violent extremist actors I'm not saying that it should be the U.S. government going to talk to Boko Haram or Al-Shabaab I'm not that naive but they're on the ground there's many bridge builders that can potentially be identified whether these are imams or elders traditional leaders local civil society groups that have legitimacy on all sides that can open the door and try and engage these actors so I would say yeah trying to really operate on on both levels of pressure from from the ground as well as engagement to de-escalate the situation okay great thank you very much so maybe one last question for the whole panel and I'll start with you Abdullah if you have thoughts on this so you know we've been speaking about kind of the need for these two communities nonviolent resistance peace building to be in greater communication to have more dialogue so you know what what would be your advice to practitioners and policymakers for how to promote greater synergies between the nonviolent resistors and the peace builders of the world you know I think that's an important question my approach should be that many of these training courses and workshops and so on that are prepared for many of the activists around the world are actually teaching people that these are different things it's either you are an activist and nonviolent resistor or you're a peace builder a negotiator and that's a different thing so this has to change people must know that it's I mean not people that are missing that the policymakers the donor organizations the NGOs the transnational networks of activists must provide this new curriculum of training and and preparation that there's no this thing different between these two I mean you can be both you can be an act you can be an activist of resistance and at the same time you can also work towards peace and negotiations at the same time you don't have to be in a in a fancy suit and in a certain approach to go and sit with someone and tell them hey I'm a negotiator my name is this and this here's my my business card this is not how negotiations often could could be I mean it could also be that you're somebody who is resisted or the revolutionist coming from social movements but also able to secure sort of a negotiation and that's had that has to start back from the trainings that really shapes the minds of the of the activist and also the the the academic community great thanks Abdel any other thoughts on practically how do we move this agenda forward nonviolent civil resistant movements need to have a well articulated strategic goal it can't just be about destruction there has to be a goal that brings a wide group of people into the mobilization and then gives them hope of something different after after that mobilization so strategic goals really matter and and then the means by which we achieve them really matter thanks yeah definitely in practical way nonviolent resistance it definitely is a nonviolent so yeah it shouldn't be harmed to any groups you know in the society but what is the goal what is the aim what is what are the as in does what are the demands and where we should table those demands you know just just protesting each other I guess I mentioned earlier you know that could create ethnic violence division in the society that makes you know the moment weaker and people fight each other we have been seeing in in many countries mostly in in african countries that you know two groups are fighting each other but issues are different you know not the color or not the race or not the religion or anything but issue you know democracy changes transformation you know opportunities there could be many other issues people might have and what is what is the way how you could make a approach to to the right place you know to the government or some bodies you know people activists organizers should be very careful that the tools we utilize you know as I mentioned earlier bundles we have been in Nepal we have been you know using bundles maybe to say one word because it may not be known to the audience exactly what that is it's a strike block it general strike general strike block it you know I give you one example that you know it's a good way you know just just put pressure to the government or a concerned body that just blocking the road you know everything no movement in and the bad part of this you know strike the bundles is you know sometime people misuse I give you one example that one incident happened that the the boss was you know running there was a rooster on the way the boss killed the rooster you know then all believers they came forward it stopped everything they you know there was a long time strike the demand was you know to pay back what is the cost to 300 Nepalese currency is a two three three dollar here US dollar the demand was you know like 500 yeah 500 000 or you should you should pay if you don't pay back you know then then no one can move the simple thing one rooster was killed it's crossing the road boss hit the rooster it's the misuse of of you know resistance so the other the main takeaway from that story is that roosters should not be protesting in the streets yeah yeah there could be a driver's group could say well then then let roosters you know counter counter yeah great thanks jivan how about you vernik about practically how to promote synergies between nonviolent resistance in peacebuilding right well I would first encourage you to read the the report that has a section at the end on kind of key learning points for different communities so whether these are nonviolent activists or trainers but also there's a section at the end which is okay what should peacebuilding donors and policymakers and practitioners learn from from all of these talk about synergies and so there's a few of these lessons one for instance focuses on the need for a shift from a conflict prevention mindset to violence prevention mindset so there's been a lot of talk in the last two years with the UN report on on sustaining peace and so forth that conflict prevention has to be emphasized everywhere and and I think what the report shows is that if conflict is avoided at all costs these might actually be ethically problematic if it leads to a reinforcement reinforcing of the status quo and a prevention of of structural change and so therefore violence should be preventing at all costs so that's kind of more of a general principle there's there's some other windows of opportunity I would say at the global policy agenda and for instance the the UN sustainable development goals that are emphasizing and the goal 16 on building inclusive and peaceful societies this focus on inclusion is very important for peacebuilding itself but I think it also offers a way of raising awareness of the need to include social movements nonviolent movements as well in peacebuilding processes and I'm sure you're all aware of this tendency for inclusive decision-making spaces like a national dialogue to bring in society civil society but only in the form of professional NGOs and a few selected representatives and and then the tendency is for the real change makers on the streets that have been engaged in asking for change let themselves being represented by others that speak in their names and this disconnect I think prevents real change from happening later on so again this search for inclusive conflict settlements should really make sure that that activists are the voices that should be heard and not only those that carried out weapons that are heard or like professional civil society voices so this is just a couple of examples of what can be done to maybe put more emphasis on nonviolent resistance alongside peacebuilding yeah I mean you're actually flagging a fascinating research topic what is which is what is the relationship between national dialogue processes which is something usip focuses on quite a bit and social movements and nonviolent activism like where do they where can they come together where's can they not that kind of thing so that's an interesting and the linkage to the sdgs is is also very helpful so thank you very neat so I'm now going to invite to the stage before we have a nice conversation with you all lisa shirk and nadine block please come up together so lisa shirk is the the research director for the toda institute for global peace and policy research she's a senior policy advisor for the alliance for peacebuilding and a professor at eastern menonite university and nadine block is the training director for beautiful trouble an organ an organization that advances creative activism she's also the author of a usip special report on the role of education and training and nonviolent resistance which is out on the display table so lisa and nadine have actually been working on a new tool for practitioners that kind of animates and makes very concrete the conversation we've been having today on the nexus of nonviolent resistance and peacebuilding so i just wanted to invite them to give a very brief preview of this training guide great thanks for having us here and thank you so much for this really insightful and evocative conversation on many levels so as you can see we're calling our our practical guide snap synergizing nonviolent action and peacebuilding and the real underlying reason for this work besides the fact that we both are educator trainer facilitators and are interested in advancing what we're talking about today which was the synergy of the two is that we are interested in increasing successful or success of movements and as you've just heard is a really you've just heard a really wonderful explanation of the fields that would come into play when we're talking about doing this work okay so some of the content actually goes kind of through the different steps from thinking about what the strengths and weaknesses are of each of these fields and the synergy part is why together they're actually each more able to be successful because of the energy that they're bringing actually adding up to more than the sum of the parts and then we start with conflict assessment and environmental scans so we're using tools from both of the fields sort of in a combined way which I don't think has been done before to try to bring together how do we set up good strategic planning both for peacebuilding processes as well as for nonviolent action so the overall frame is actually very much focused on success and strategic planning so getting to the final chapters of the book which get to BATNA the best alternative to a negotiated agreement how do we start thinking in terms of win-win what does the opponent needs what are their interests how do we reach a sustainable outcome or a negotiation outcome settlement so that the outcome is not then questioned and people can can be sustainable on the outcome and the one thing that I'll add we were really striving to produce something that was useful or practical so we have a great emphasis in each of the units on exercises or applied things that you can do with the knowledge that will support the work that we think will help us be more successful as nonviolent activists and as peacebuilders and we also have a big commitment in this idea that it will be useful to not making it a 3000 page tome that you'll never pick up so it's not completely inclusive but rather selective of particular things within the strategic arc of success of incorporating what people might call formal dialogue or just simply the ability to talk to each other on the street in a way that's not alienating all the way up to formal negotiation or the ability to come to the table and not you know distance yourself from fellow activists and destroy your movement so there's that whole spectrum and it's based in practical exercises some of which you may have seen before and some of which are completely new that we've developed in this moment where there seems to be a very helpful interest in reintegrating the spectrum of tools that are available to nonviolent activists and peacebuilders okay thanks very much Lisa and Nadine and that's we're very excited yes thank you very excited for that guide to come out within the next few months so we now have plenty of time to have a conversation with you all I believe we have two mics and two mic runners so if folks just want to raise their hand and we'll get you the mic please introduce yourself offer your affiliation and just you know keep the questions comments terse and pithy thanks so in the very back in the blue morning my name is Ashok Panikar and I'm with Metaculture thank you so much this was really refreshing extraordinarily timely I would like to have the panel focus for the moment on what's happening in this country because this is exactly the kind of challenge that I am working with right now particularly where the anger and almost hatred of my own peer group the liberal left progressives towards anybody who disagrees with them is completely shutting down conversations from the right and the conservatives and in the process creating a backlash which could be extraordinarily dangerous so I see people power happening but given that as a mediator and a facilitator I've been trying to get groups together to talk about these things the inability of some of my colleagues to even get people to the table because the progressives don't necessarily believe that there's any reason to talk to people who disagree with them so I'd love to hear from the panel how you feel we could actually address some of these issues close to home thank you so we're not that's a great question thank you very much and thank you for your activism without getting into details on the domestic context in the political situation here to address his question kind of how should the how should activists in general think about getting to the negotiating table and what lessons would be relevant here from other cases yeah yeah I sat down with a group of housing activists some years ago New York housing activists for a negotiation training that their leadership had set up for them and they just hated me for 48 hours and I finally said why do people hate this training and me personally so much and one of them finally timidly said you know we don't see ourselves as negotiators we're right and the mayor and the city council are our targets we just want to burn the house down we don't want to talk to them and then I asked well what happens if the mayor and the city council invite you in to talk about solutions to your concerns and then there was stunned silence so they had not really thought through can we be part of the solution they saw themselves as the mobilizing coercive element rather than the creative synergistic element so I think part of the answer to your question is that people who advocate for change and have grievance need to look at some of our pioneering figures like King like Gandhi they were not about hatred and othering even though they understood how to mobilize a community that has grievances and faces injustices they also knew how to hold up the humanity of the other so that whatever change comes is not a new destructive change even if you have to destroy old structures you still have to build peace with whoever was part of that old structure at some in some at some level I'll stop there that's really helpful holding up the humanity of the other even as one is engaged in nonviolent resistance and activism thank you another question sure right here thank you Nizar Farzakhana leadership and negotiations trainer in fact and involved in a few non-violence initiatives in Palestine and Israel my question is actually to take this further right the question of polarization is in fact maybe polarization is the wrong word because what you're doing is you're agitating your conscientiation I think you said the very neat which is you're shedding light to to injustice or in a status quo that's not tenable right so when we're in fact in organizing we say we mobilize we polarized to mobilize and we compromise to settle right so the whole idea of mobilization is precisely to get to the negotiating table to begin with right but if that's not clear in the design of the mobilization then that's the problem right because there isn't that excuse me that expectation and there is this expectation of capitulation so in your experience what are things that we can do to enable as interveners right to enable both sides the powerful and those with less power to see the importance of maybe not the legitimacy of the other but that you're gonna need to you won't get to your objectives without some sort of work with the other what are things that actually have worked in debunking the capitulation theory of change that the other needs to capitulate they cannot whether the government needs to see that the nonviolent failed because they don't want further ones or the resistance right realizing that if they want to destroy and completely annihilate the the powerful then it's highly unlikely that they're going to succeed and in fact we've seen many revolutions ending up being worse dictatorships than the ones that you replace so what are things that actually have worked in sensitizing people in realizing importance of collaboration so how to constructively engage the other in the context of nonviolent struggles well i'm a scientist so i always think the the power of evidence is what works best but i'm you know i understand that it doesn't work for everyone right so what would work for me would be yeah you come with figures that show okay well actually negative sentiments were much more long lasting than than you know defeat or or victory over the other side but yeah as i said it might not work for for everyone so i'm sure there's more kind of visual and and and yeah colorful ways of of of demonstrating that examples from elsewhere i think the difficulty of of working with activists that don't get that early on is that then it makes them very bad negotiators and we've heard that very clearly from Egypt right activists made very bad negotiators and so if you then bring them to the table without having them like really ready and prepared for for for the need that at some point they'll have to sit with the other and and negotiate mutually working solutions in an inclusive way then then they'll completely lose out and and the problem is that most negotiation trainings are done with groups with governments but activists are not trained into negotiation and i think this also has to become very much part of the training repertoire that makes that was my attempt at answering makes sense any other thoughts on that because it's a great question i just had a few points the win-win solution is a great great idea of negotiation you know if you look at uh elivia what happened after the revolution you know that was completely you know defeated moment one group was completely you know wiped out uh replaced by various you know uprising factors groups and and what happened result is is that created a vacuum and and created different divisions and still they have been fighting so uh the best idea i have noticed seen yesterday is is a negotiation best negotiation you know give space to uh to the other side also you know and there is definitely you know changing scenario um situation uh system would definitely be changed and other group the the regime or or dictator whatever we say you know give them a space that they could exist not in the power powerful position like we are doing our king is living still in in the park you know we didn't force him to go to to go out so he has a space but he's not in power and that was negotiating you know we negotiated we said uh with with the king parties definitely you know uh the activists were not not in the negotiate the negotiating table you know particular different political parties and king and different groups were there but not the activists we were not there so it was negotiated uh you know so it is the best model of conflict conflict resolution and the other group the regime of former dictator or king or whatever would not feel that i was defeated so then they have a space other ways that would create a vacuum and create a destructive you know anti-force whatever is happening like for example look at the era you know uh the so uh uh the seah group um maliki prime minister maliki you know he he uh forced out the vice president that uh represented the sunni groups you know they're talking about iraq not syria iraq yeah and already sunni groups were you know you know thinking that their rights were you know violated or suppressed by the seah groups they had a you know classes and the both parties were always you know saddam was gone but their people were there already there so the balance second balance didn't have you know quite equal and the maliki government was not careful same thing is happening in sura south sura you know the ethnic violence now is a result of the the representatives from the other side too so one group feels that this is country my country i'm powerful and every powerful seats or position should be from my group i mean group and other group feels isolated and takes arms and creates the division all right thank you very much next question um in the pink in the middle thank you very much my name is mescara masafa i'm from Ethiopia i was activist for human trafficking and advocating for women domestic workers in the middle east but today i'm very happy to be here because i'm talking about peace so something makes me afraid sorry for my english because this is my second language when i when we talk about peace in my country like Ethiopia there is a lot of ethnic groups almost 72 the government divide these ethnic groups by a language so these ethnic groups are right now they are fighting each others if you look at the media like people's take actions and our Ethiopian is the historical part of Ethiopia because we are living together eating together married each others right now is everybody separating and then if you pass other place somebody kill you and cut your breasts so was this kind of things happen because people is a power but people is a divide how can we bring to all these peoples together to make a peace first before a negotiation the government because the government his target is already divide us to make us very weak so i'm afraid in people's are where migrants out of the country and then when we come in here is where very weak we don't have any power to say something and the other thing is everybody we are afraid to talk because our families back home they will attack them automatically because our government is very strong people everywhere my question is how to bring our people together like before they're loving each other married each other eating each other and make one Ethiopia together that's my question how to bring them all together that's a really great question and i think this is a vexing one how do you um in deeply divided societies help bridge those divides and what is the relevance of both nonviolent action and you know peace building processes like negotiations and the like somebody want to tackle that yeah i mean i feel you i mean that's exactly how i feel about being away from home and i mean this question that i i try to think of an answer for it every day but what i want to say is that in the diaspora many groups starting from back in the Cuban revolution again i mean uh struggle against Batista the Burmese the Burmese diaspora and and many other diaspora groups have been successful in trying to help local communities back home to continue their the struggle and their advocacy on behalf of human rights the thing is that now we're no longer living in in a wallet where there's no connections i mean that brings me back to your point the gentleman we're talking about activism here i mean activism is no longer located in a specific geographical location you don't have to be any Ethiopia to advocate for human rights you can be here do advocacy from here in fact it could be even better because here you're able to more express yourself are able to mobilize able to talk to people are able even to raise funds and send it back home in multiple ways i mean there is a big role for people who are in the exile to work on behalf and support people back home in terms of how to bring unity to their to their to the to the activists back home and to remain in one countries because we have seen examples where civil resistance and start could lead to a lot of divides i think that relies a lot on the narratives adopted in in the activism discourses what kind of language do we talk about who are people that are joining our groups etc etc there are multiple things but we always have a great chance to do that even if you are in the exile it's really you know i i heard your voice you know how difficult situation would be in on the ground you know and fighting each other sexual violence is is a must dangerous violence in the world that kills everyone no matter who what where you know children women adults everyone fighting each other both groups killing each other and never ending never ends and ravines and ravines and ravines ongoing violence so in nipal we have more than 100 ethnic groups small country located between india and china a small country 26 million people more than 100 languages more than 100 ethnic groups we have been living together i mean in the same society rarely we fight not fighting each other like you know hitting each other and there are some you know tradition customs we apply you know i want to say one one example that could be useful to spread the the masses in the world who are fighting we have a meat culture meat culture have you heard of the meat culture meat means we declare meat of a male one one male person or female girl woman whatever is from one group not from the same group and other the male or female or whoever from other group they declare meat that means a great friendship a friendship a great friendship not only simple friendship they take a responsibility of other other families so meat family i have a meat family here in the united states i love them you know so a meat family is from two two groups two ethnic groups they declare they celebrate it's not the marries like boy and boy or girl or girl it's not totally different than the marries but they love them you know two two two families and their their relatives for example two are meats one group one guy and the other guy two guys from two groups but their relatives 100 200 meat meat father meat mother meat auntie meat nephew so many meat friends too my friend meat's friend so you know that is the idea that bringing people uh different ethnic groups together you know we have we have big celebration we invite hundreds and you know depends on how big their society our families people invite their families friends together and celebrate and then there are responsibility if something happens to my families this shake hands they come together you know they support the hell and this idea is working very well that more than 100 ethnic groups in Nepal living in Nepal they don't fight each other even even religious violence we don't very rarely really religious violence exists in Nepal we love each other's religions we don't hate each other you know Muslim we don't hate hate Muslims we don't hate Christian we don't hate Hindus Buddhists we we visit each other's temples you know respect respecting each other's that's the idea one wishes that could happen elsewhere yeah of course yeah so Virenik I know you had a quick point on this issue of like how to address deeply divided societies because I actually think this is one area where the two fields really need to converge and that you know the negotiators have a lot to say on this um yeah well your question made me think of uh this very recurrent pattern of governments using these divide and rule strategies everywhere right to make sure that's that those that demand change are not going to be strong enough to to act together and uh and I think one can look at examples and and what I what I understood is that in Ethiopia there's a number of ethnic armed groups that are not working together but are working against each other and I think it's possible to look at examples like Myanmar that has been cited before where various ethnic armed groups managed to actually join some form of loose coalition to to to have a like a inclusive negotiation table but also there have been cases where divided societies that create divided armed groups have managed to realize that actually by changing strategies and by transforming their struggle strategies from armed strategies to non-violent strategies has enabled this coalition building that is so important for change to happen and and Nepal is one of many examples where the Maoist armed group but also very divided political parties some of which were representing various ethnic interests had managed to bring to to to meet in India for like an internal negotiation between them to agree on a common platform and to then be stronger together when they would go for negotiations and these made it possible for the people power revolution to happen so that internal negotiation and dialogue that Anthony was talking about before is crucial for coalition building to maybe become possible in deeply divided societies it's a great answer thank you um so let's try to in far in the back in the black I think or navy blue thank you thank you so much my name is Sergio Martinez and I am from Catholic University of America originally from Guatemala um my question is in regards to the leadership structure and I want to discuss what kind of leadership is ideal in addressing in addressing changes for for the societies so my question is how do you bring inclusive and accountable leadership that holds a balance of power and sustainable collaboration between peace builders and non-violent civil resistance great question how to bring an inclusive accountable leadership I think that part of that is how you how you envision and then build the post-transition constitution government laws like in Guatemala you have the weird thing that Efraín Rios Mont became president after you know we got rid of the military dictatorship um so that shows that there was a an incomplete you know transition in the way the population was able to figure out what the post civil war post transitional government would look like it's not always possible to to create the perfect trend you know post transition order and maybe we have to aim for less than perfection uh at the same time I guess focus on building institutions rather than just prohibiting individuals from getting back to power the South American transitional justice examples further further south from Guatemala I think you know they they gave a lot of amnesties out in their early years and and that was probably all they could do in later years legislatures overturned some of those amnesties and were able to start prosecuting people for their um egregious violations of human rights that's because there were fewer dangers to judges and lawyers and there was more of a collective norm of of human rights accountability that didn't exist at the earlier stage so articulating it properly and then you know getting the timing right I think are two parts of that in Guatemala just a quick note Guatemala is just such a fascinating case where two years ago in 2015 a mass broad base nonviolent movement came together focused on corruption that involved virtually every segment of Guatemalan society and resulted in um you know the head of state in a very corrupt inner core resigning power in facing justice it's one of the most amazing examples actually a broad base effective nonviolent resistance in recent history so anyway um so right up here in the middle in the white thank you my name is Kosconi Abdul Shafi I'm from Sudan human right activist been working for the last seven years outside Sudan thank you for the good lecture my question is going to professor Anthony and the relationship between the quality negotiation and the success of civil activism uh nonviolent activism uh in a situation where societies or civil society or the activists himself are less organized due to the limited space or freedoms and so much oppression and the civil society or the groups are less organized in terms of defining their demands or having a shared vision of what they want to make how could you make a negotiation successful what kind of really good tools to be used in such situation to make a quality to ensure the quality negotiation thank you it's a great question when groups are less organized how can negotiations emerge and be effective I think Gandhi's example was to try to get a symbolic component of society that around which he could mobilize people who might not otherwise come together the salt satya graha the salt protest uh was derided by some of his peers at the time but he understood that this would be a powerful way to unite people across various dividing lines within British Indian society and that the poor especially would understand the symbolism of it and then come together for the political campaign so you have to find some unifying themes that are easy to grasp that mobilize without creating too much hatred because mobilization always creates some exclusion that can they can quite easily spill over into excessive othering so some symbol around which people can mobilize but then a limited I think agenda for change not an infinite one also helps people I think to climb on board and say this will be worth it and the more of us get together and join into it the more effective will be it's harder at the beginning I think to get large groups of people to coalesce into a single movement so simplicity symbolism um the tools of mobilization that are well understood by by leaders around the world as long as they don't spill into demonization of whoever the target is those are all effective okay it helps sometimes to have a super national identity you know we have societies around the world where people don't have an allegiance to a state they have an allegiance to a local identity that has been sometimes artificially inflated it was a really cool tv commercial a few years ago in lebanon during the political campaigns must have been a decade ago where lebanese citizens would go up on the camera one by one and say in arabic Anna suni i am a suni Anna marooni i'm a maronite um one by one each sect would go up and and then finally in the backdrop behind them the lebanese flag fell the screen turned black and in white letters when will we be lebanese was the question because lebanese are all you know lebanese in the diaspora at home they're all part of the sect so creating a super national you know an identity that helps people come together um is an important part of that but it can't be too exclusive of others at the same time right thank you all right here in the front hi my name is rose burger i'm with the catholic non-violence initiative and uh following uh off of what anthony just said pope francis has encouraged a process um to look at how the catholic church can scale up its nonviolent action i think the catholic church as a global entity is a is in a unique position as a supernatural supranational entity as well as a highly locally identified uh entity and it also in its positive formation has a long experience with peace building but what he's encouraging now is to look at how to bring nonviolent action alongside of that so i wonder if uh the folks here on this panel would uh could could talk about what kind of an impact do you think a vatican council or a vatican department on uh nonviolence and peace building could have in a in a in the various uh context around the world great question it's just a beautiful thing i mean i was part of pax christie many years ago and to have the vatican say nonviolent activism is all right it's like having the secretary of defense you know and endorse nonviolent civil resistance as a strategy for change it's a it's a magnificent thing to have the leadership open itself up to a potentially subversive um strategy okay yeah i agree i i mean the the the most recent experience i had of the power of of the vatican was uh in early april i was in the best country to witness the demilitarization of the armed organization et a which happened by actually through a very inclusive civil society led model that i think should be definitely replicated elsewhere come to me if you want to hear more about it but what was interesting was that the vatican had sent a representative as a witness to uh the decision by an armed organization to completely change a strategy of struggle and to decide to give back to the society the weapons that he had taken in defense of that society and to decide to move forward by political or nonviolent means and uh the decision to have the vatican send representative there was i think a very powerful symbol that was very much acknowledged and recognized by by people yeah i mean i think it would be a powerful thing if someone like a pope francis who i think by instinct gets the relationship between nonviolent action and peacebuilding would one day you know offer nonviolent action nonviolence as the a prominent theme of the catholic church um yeah right here and the white hi my name is philis odabas gal di i i'm the executive director of international association for human values and um i have a quick comment and a question one of the major contributing factors to violence is the lack of adequate programs that teach people how to handle negative emotions neither at home nor at school are we ever taught how to handle anger anxiety frustration helplessness and depression which in conflict situations escalate and turn into violence my organization offers these highly researched and evidence-based tools and techniques that when applied regularly have been shown to shift people's mindset and make peace sustainable my question is whether any of the speakers are looking at the importance of preventive tools into their work for peace okay and since we're almost getting near the end why don't we group a few more and then we'll ask the panel to uh respond kind of collectively to the questions so very far in the back standing up oh thank you uh this is a great discussion my name is philip dang and i'm from south sudan um today i'm here with my colleagues we just came um last week from south sudan uh peter and anual uh they were sitting right toward the front if you can please stand up peter and anual hello south sudan is in such a chaos right now as we speak a lot of uh violent activities are going on in south sudan and uh i i believe personally that um the only solution to south sudanese uh um uh conflict is um it's not the humanitarian uh work nor the peacekeeping um uh projects but rather the us government it's an um organization like us ip to influence the politicians in south sudan so that the um the uh conflict among the uh tribes and also the communities in south sudan can be prevented um peter might be able uh to elaborate on this topic because he's the uh human right activist in south sudan he's actively um working in south sudan uh between the two tribes major two tribes right now in south sudan which is denka and new air um and he also has a vast uh knowledge because he lived there in the underground and so my question to the panel today is how do we um bring both parties um i'm talking about the government of south sudan and the rebels uh leaders who are by the way scattered all over the all over the world right now as we speak and none of the leaders for the rebels or actually in south sudan but they have influence on their followers uh in south sudan to continue the violent uh thank you okay thank you very much one more question um all right we'll take two since you're very energetic there and then one here um so we'll get that one i'm doha from lebanon and uh my question was about media how to convince media that nonviolent uh movement is worth coverage and also if we were speaking about win-win situation and not excluding certain actors how we cannot exclude some spoilers and um how we can make win-win situation while some actors being again in authority might regenerate and reproduce their systems thank you and one last one start to prepare your i'm indy riser i'm deeply involved with many organizations but the american friend service community and global peace services i want to tease out the role of the media now there are many mechanisms that outreach can occur but the commercial media and of course we've been told in the u.s that there's a lot of fake media but how can word be put out that shows the various needs and interests of the conflicting sides that's not very easy to do there is censorship there is lack of access and we're seeing in turkey how journalists are trying to be objective are really cut down and uh in danger of their lives and certainly their uh positions so how can groups that are peacemakers and peace activists work with the media to tell their stories but include those that they don't agree with in their tails great thank you very much so we have a few minutes to respond however you'd like to dealing with negative emotions and psychosocial dimensions civil war in south sudan uh media how to convince the media that nonviolent resistance is worth covering and being able to show different perspectives and how to engage spoilers okay very very quickly emotions i think it's a very interesting point because emotions are often overlooked in such a thing and in my experience being in revolutions before revolution is a very emotional moment i cried in the revolution more than ever did in my life i've seen people falling in love to each other in revolution people hate each other in the revolution revolution is a is an upheaval not just on a political level but also in the emotional and the personal level i mean think about it i lived all my life at that time i was 26 or 27 a revolution and i only lived towards one president throughout my whole life so when i actually had a chance and and and feel the moment that i how no matter how weak or small i am is able to bring down a dictator that was like very emotional people were hugging each other in the squares people were loving each other it was an 18 day on the 18 day of utopia in egypt and then later everything changed but at that time it was an emotion thing and yes emotions like pride and shame played later on as we said before about in the negotiations how did the halt the negotiation how also we boost negotiations and many things so i think it's an it's an interesting point because emotions do play a role in revolutions but doha's point on on media i don't think there is actually a way to convince traditional media that uh that they don't have to get involved in that sort of thing because media live off of big events right i mean i wouldn't think of seeing and covering society in butan because they love each other right but they will go if there is a war right sin doesn't sin and bbc and so on they're not interested if you are peaceful you're boring right it has to be interesting and to be interesting you have to be violent big doing something and so on so even even revolutions in in the arab spring were as i said before do not 100 peaceful and that's why they gained traction the third point is if we really want to provide a counter-narrow or a parallel narratives to media i think now we do have this platform the social media where we actually can't present ourselves in the social media and again the arab spring is an excellent example of that people signed up with their full profile on facebook and twitter and so on to attend multiple events in many parts of of the arab spring and they managed to to bring down dictators this way and the governments later on realize the power of social media when they started to have their own pages and communicate with people in that sense i'll stop here so i can give chance so just very briefly does anyone else have quick reflections on either south sudan media or okay go ahead go ahead yeah two reflections the first one on both the south sudan question and the part of the libanon question on spoilers i think one needs to understand inclusivity in negotiations as let's say a two level game i think inclusivity in negotiations means that definitely all potential spoilers need to be there because if they aren't there they're going to make sure that the the result is not implemented but at the same time there is what i would call the vertical dimension meaning that all affected communities have to be there and if you know if negotiations are about justice victims should be there if negotiations are about land reform peasants should be there so i think it's this two level game that it's hard to combine at the same time but has to be tried and i think in the case of south sudan the us have such an important influence on on on the the parties and especially has this history correlation with the splm right and i think that history correlation has very much to be used to put pressure on on the government to to come forward with a with an inclusive dialogue which you know is not going to be what the official national dialogue that south sudanese government now wants to put forward but to have it a really genuinely inclusive dialogue again along this kind of two dimensions and in terms of media i think that there is a need to at the same time educate journalists on you know what what is civil resistance and what are different ways that civil resistance can be shown this incredible work that is being done by the icnc i think for instance to document what 300 plus ways through which nonviolent action can be can be waged uh or to document creative actions that have been carried out around the world and so i think the way that that nonviolent resistance can be made um i don't know sexy sexy right it's by thank you or dramatic it's by it's by documenting these very creative ways and proactive ways through which struggles are waged so it's not only about people going down on the streets but there's you know there's there's probably very new worthy ways of of resisting that are worth showing and it's about educating journalists through to that dimension okay and we're over so just very quickly to wrap us up yeah i wouldn't go over student certainly this problem because it's it's you know on the pen list they answer i would focus a little bit more on on media as a journalist myself uh definitely is a problem how much space uh corporation corporate media they give to the non-violence strategy or method or revolution you know currently the two issues the turkeys journalists you know i think yesterday the developer yesterday they were they had a trial and and the aljajira issues you know the dictators anywhere in the world dictators they never like for example is it you know president cc he would not allow to any journalist to raise any voices against against his regime south is why south is are so much worried about aljajira you know that their coverage and why why uh uh truck truck is arrogant president arrogant is is worried about the journalists their his regime is putting off most of the journalists in in jail except who support his strategy his his government so in the u.s if if we look at very very few media's you know even really they come you know giving space to non-violent or any any uh you know uh wall Street you know protest or 99 percent of protest in very little space because they sell um uh either they support the reason or they sell their uh products who buys their products that you know that depends on on the media okay thanks for and anthony just close the panel for us anger and emotions directly connected to negotiation and conflict resolution uh if we sort of suppress our emotions they come out in other ways the antidote i think has always been to learn self-awareness at an individual as well as collective level and balance empathy with assertiveness you assert your needs your grievances uh but you empathize and invite empathy all right well on that note thank you first of all to the panelists for engaging in a really fascinating conversation thank you all in the audience for coming out and till the next time