 Hello, I'm Jonathan Pinkney, Senior Researcher for the Program on Nonviolent Action at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this event series on People Power, Peace, and Democracy. In these events, we'll bring together academics and activists, peace builders, and policymakers to discuss practical lessons learned from groundbreaking research at the intersection of nonviolent action, peace building, and political change. We'll talk about how mediation can transform nonviolent action movements, show the strategies grassroots movements have used to pressure warring parties to come to the negotiation table, and how action on the streets can carry those negotiations to a peaceful resolution. And we'll take a long-term look at how nonviolent action and inclusive dialogue and negotiation processes can help forge a long-term sustainable democracy that includes the voices of the most marginalized. We hope these conversations will inform and inspire you, as together we seek to better understand and bring about a world where conflict and injustice can be resolved without violence. Thank you. Ordinary citizens during civil wars might seem to have few options for moving their countries toward peace. And when peace processes happen, they're often dominated by political elites without meaningful inclusion of grassroots voices. But the powerful example of courageous activists who have led many different campaigns around the world shows that nonviolent action can play a crucial role in transforming armed conflict. But how does this work? And what tactics and strategies are most successful for activists and their external allies in these situations? To discuss some of these questions today, I'm joined first by two leading researchers on the topic, Dr. Luke Abbs, a research fellow at the University of Essex, and Dr. Marina Petrova, a postdoctoral research fellow at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. For the last year, Drs. Abbs and Petrova have been working on a USIP cross-national research project on the nonviolent action tactics that are most effective in promoting peace in civil wars, and that's what we'll be chatting about this morning. Welcome, Luke and Marina. It's really wonderful to have both of you with us this morning. So I'd like to start just with a kind of basic introductory question. Can you introduce us to your research on nonviolent action and peace processes? What kinds of civil wars and nonviolent action are you looking at, and what are you trying to understand? OK, so basically we're looking at nonviolent action that's carried out by civil society organizations in the context of civil war. And what we're interested in is, does these forms of nonviolent action impact civil war peace processes? And in particular, we're interested, does these former actions increase the likelihood of initial negotiations, and then subsequently does this increase the likelihood of a peace settlement? So in this regard, we kind of see a civil war peace process as a series of kind of peace initiatives leading from initial negotiations to an eventual peace settlement. And this, of course, isn't necessarily linear, so there might maybe a few kind of peace agreements. So a peace agreement might fail and subsequently succeed, or there might be a series of settlements that basically pick different aspects of the conflict. So we're interested in, you know, is this action active around these time periods, and is it having an effect? Is it having a positive effect on the peace process itself? So the reason why we've been looking into this is because we know from civil resistance research or research on nonviolent action from the last 10 years that this has a very kind of a strong effect on different types of political change. So for instance, raising change, democratization, and also improves quality of democracy. So we know that nonviolent resistance can have huge, you know, impacts on political change. What we don't know so well is the impacts that this may have during civil war. So there's some kind of emerging areas of research. So there's some excellent case research that's been conducted on Columbia, which is looking at kind of local communities and how they engage with armed groups. They're basically finding that they can, you know, they can create kind of informal agreements that creates conformity and reduces violence in these areas and essentially leading to what they call zones of peace. There's some new research that's ongoing looking at nonviolent campaigns and whether these impacts civil war peace processes. Some research that I've conducted myself with the International Centre on Nonviolent Conflicts is finding some good evidence about this. And basically when nonviolent campaigns are active, the seeming increased likelihood of peace agreements. But this research and it's still emerging tends to focus on specific actors. So nonviolent campaigns or like local actors in Columbia, this kind of misses a lot of other actors that are active in various civil wars and the, you know, the diversity and variety of nonviolent tactics that these organisations are using. So we're trying to take a broader approach to understand what's going on and what the impacts, you know, these various different tactics are having. Yeah. And sorry, if I might jump in, essentially, we we look at four specific nonviolent tactics in this project which we think are extremely important and they have been widely used by different activists and the civil society actors. So we focus on protest tactics, such as demonstrations. In addition, we examine political engagement tactics such as lobbying and bridging activities, non-cooperation tactics such as strikes and boycotts. And finally, we explore intervention tactics such as sit-ins, occupations, and the creation of alternative institutions. And in this project, we examine major, deadlier civil wars on the African continent in the post-Cold War period. In the years between 1990 and 2009. We believe that the focus on these deadlier major wars is important because it provides us with an arena to study the more difficult conflicts, the ones that are perhaps least likely to see a peace process and the ones that we probably will see more difficulties for activists and civil society actors to engage in nonviolent tactics. So all the effects of nonviolent tactics that we find are actually extremely important since we examine these very difficult cases. Great. Thank you so much for that overview. I'd love to hear from either of you some examples of these different nonviolent action tactics during civil wars that particularly stand out to you and a little bit about some of the impacts that some of those specific cases might have had. Yes, I think I can answer this question. So I think that there's so many different cases and motivating cases for this study as well, but I think two probably come to mind. The first is in Liberia, which is a very well known case with the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, which is a women's organisation that recruited from different ethnicities, different kind of religions, came together to basically protest against the civil war in the country and what was going on. So they started initially with kind of mass demonstrations, basically in the capital, some kind of political engagement activities, basically trying to both pressure and support initial kind of peace negotiations and they were very successful in that. Later on they kind of moved to kind of more intervention tactics such as sit-ins, occupations. So towards the end, the kind of conflict got kind of increased intensity and the peace process was actually a threat. And so they actually occupied around the kind of presidential palace, going as far as actually stopping people leaving to try and pressure for peace. They even sent delegations and formal peace talks in Ghana to continue to lobby and try and push the parties towards peace. I think another case which shows, you know, kind of a different aspect, shows the power of protest and how protest can actually change the dynamics of civil war is, I mean, as many cases such as Nepal and other well known cases. But one thing that really comes to mind is Mali because it's a very unlikely case. It emerged in the early 90s in one of the poorest countries on Earth in, you know, Northern and Ongoing civil war in the Northern Tureg regions with a very repressive kind of military government and, you know, a very kind of, you know, small kind of urban percentage of the population. And so it's very difficult for them to mobilize in them situations, but they were able to. And the Alliance for Democracy in Mali led initial kind of mass protests at the end of 1990 and by mid-1991 they'd actually overfro the military government and what this really had is two notable effects. So initially it had an effect on leading to initial peace negotiations with the military government and the rebels, kind of out of necessity because troops were diverted from the Tureg region to the capital to deal with the unrest. But later on it had a real effect on migrating the peace process. So once the military government was removed, the civilian government really pushed for peace. They pushed for initiatives like devolving power to try and give, to try and spread democracy but also give the Tureg some more kind of local powers to basically solve both issues and also engage in a lot of kind of civic activities, you know, different kind of forums to bring civil society together and come up with solutions. So these two cases amongst many others show that there is huge potential here for positive effect of these actions. Great. Thanks so much, Luke. So Marina, you mentioned before that these four categories of nonviolent action tactics that you're looking at from political engagement to protests to non-cooperation and intervention. So what have you found about the kinds of nonviolent action tactics in these categories that particularly affect whether civil war negotiations are going to happen? That sort of first stage that you were talking about. Yes, so we actually uncover a very interesting picture on the effects of these different nonviolent tactics on civil war negotiations. We see that these different tactics indeed produce different effects on the likelihood of negotiations. We initially hypothesized, assumed that protests and political engagement tactics, as we've seen in many examples, real world examples, would have a positive influence on negotiations. And indeed we do find a very strong positive effect, which is extremely encouraging. So this really suggests that protests and political engagement tactics can contribute to conflict transformation and facilitate cooperation between the warring parties and actually help them come to the negotiating table. With regards to non-cooperation and intervention tactics, we initially thought that these two tactics will have little to no direct effect on negotiations because we see those as more having to do with conflict intensity, really. As we have some preliminary indication that specifically non-cooperation tends to reduce conflict intensity. And from anecdotal evidence, we find that non-cooperation tactics, such as dead home strikes, which have occurred in a lot of contexts in Africa in objection to violence, then they reduce battle debts. However, in our analysis, we surprisingly find that non-cooperation and intervention tactics are negatively associated with the likelihood of negotiation. I should stress that these are our preliminary findings and we're still exploring these very surprising negative effects. But our initial reaction is that we suspect that these negative influence could be related to the timing of the events. And basically, if non-cooperation, for instance, is linked to lower conflict intensity, this does not really mean that this would then bring a green light for the negotiations to take place. There could be a lot of dynamics going on. And as mentioned, these are preliminary findings. So we will be exploring this in further detail as we move on with the project. Thank you. That's really fascinating about kind of, you know, it's not just that nonviolent action sort of writ large has a uniform effect on the likelihood of negotiations in these situations, but that the specific tactical choices that movements make may have differential effects on outcomes like this. I'm curious about that sort of second stage as well. And once negotiations have started, how do these different kinds of tactics then affect the likelihood that a peace agreement is going to come out of those negotiations? Yes. So we're also finding divergent effects in terms of peace agreements as well. So subject to initially being a peace negotiation and then, you know, looking later at whether there's subsequently a peace settlement or a peace agreement, we're also finding these kind of interesting divergent effects. So one of the things we expected and I think everyone would expect is the same kind of protest and engagement activities that we're finding really good evidence for that kind of increases and, you know, the initial negotiations and initiates a peace process. We're not finding much evidence at the moment that this is also related to subsequent agreements. So which is kind of a surprising finding because there is emerging evidence of mass nonviolent campaigns and mass kind of protests against the government are increasing likelihood of peace agreements. But what we suspect at the moment, we're not too sure because it's still kind of preliminary, but what we suspect this could be is civil society organizations might actually start to lose influence as the peace process continues. And this is something we need to kind of look much more into. So it's very hard to sustain this kind of culture for peace and sustain that kind of level of mobilization for the whole process. And the second real challenge for civil society organizations is they don't tend to be included in formal peace negotiations or eventual peace settlements. They tend to be excluded from these processes, which is a real shame because if they're having a really good effect in the beginning and they're unable to sustain and continue to support the peace process, that would be a real shame. But we're not really too sure and we're still kind of exploring this prospect. But what we are finding is more evidence for intervention. So these kind of stay-at-home strikes and also the creation of alternative institutions, occupations. These kind of more kind of stringent kind of forms of action. And we basically find that this increases the likelihood of a peace agreement. And what we think this might relate to is, I mean, for example, this really fits the situation in Liberia where we have the kind of initial engagement, we have the initial protest activity. And then later on when the peace process looked like it was going to fail, there was a kind of switching tactics, more towards kind of occupations, sit-ins, pressure the parties into the agreement. Perhaps because they were kind of excluded from the process or not as included as they should have been. And also, you know, in other contexts, we know the importance of alternative institutions that are created by civil society. So if we think of, you know, in South Africa, when we think of the committees that were set up in the townships, we're basically running their own kind of education, their own kind of healthcare, their own kind of politics. It basically undermines the legitimacy of the government and government institutions. But what alternative institutions also do is they provide a blueprint for what the future inclusive institutions might look like or how they might work. And it's basically paved the way for, you know, what, you know, democracy or what these kind of inclusive institutions, which are often forming the core of most kind of peace settlements, you know, can provide a blueprint for this. So we're finding some evidence there, but of course, you know, this is still very preliminary and we need to look into this further. That's really fascinating that kind of the impact of particular tactics in a way switches depending on sort of what stage you're at. And I think, again, it's a really crucial lesson for activists and civil society groups that are interested in influencing peace processes that, you know, you may like, you need to be aware of the strategic situation and cognizant of how that not all nonviolent action tactics are going to have the same kind of effects in different contexts. I'd be curious to hear a little bit more from both of you about, you know, this kind of question of practical lessons. You know, if you were to give some key takeaways from this for activists who may be interested in influencing or like helping their countries move towards peace, what would that be? And perhaps for, you know, external peace builders as well who are interested in promoting peace and supporting activists and civil society groups on the ground, what would be some key takeaways or lessons that you would emphasize from your research? Right, so we really find in this project that different nonviolent tactics in civil war contexts are likely to produce divergent effects on conflict dynamics and the likelihood of a peace process. And the general finding, as you don't incorrectly mentioned, is that different tactics also work differently at different stages of the peace process, so to speak. But one thing that emerges from our research and we think is quite important is that protest and political engagement tactics in initiating negotiations in a peace process. And this really suggests that civil society actors, activists, ordinary people do have the power to really engage in productive nonviolent action and not just be bystanders and observers of the violent conflict but actually use these nonviolent tactics strategically to change the course of the conflict. And perhaps a key takeaway message or lesson for activists and ordinary people is to use these specific nonviolent tactics strategically at the different stages of the peace process as we see that not all forms of nonviolent action work at all stages of the peace process. And Luke, do you want to add to this? Yeah, so I think in terms of international stakeholders, I do believe that these kind of stakeholders are aware that there's nonviolent action going on on the ground especially kind of international peace building organisations and various other kind of stakeholders that are involved in the conflict. I do think they're aware, but for the reason of this research some of these kind of stakeholders are not sure what the kind of impact of these actions are and there may actually be some suspicion that maybe these forms of action might actually make things worse might actually escalate a conflict. So I think there's genuine fear there, but I feel what our research, although again it's preliminary this stage what our research is showing is that them fears are not really being seen in our data. So if engagement and protest activity is really supporting a peace process I really think the main message is that external actors should support these organisations should support this on the ground, these bottom up processes. And I think for two key reasons, right, because we know from research on civil resistance against dictatorship, we know that when there's more international support from abroad they're more likely to be successful. So perhaps with these kind of different actors on the ground with more kind of technical support, more financial support they might also be more successful and able to make a bigger impact on the civil war and the peace process. And lastly, we know from other research that when civil society is included in these peace settlements that peace is more likely to be durable. So if we are having this process where civil society is starting to be drowned out and not included in later parts of the peace process and definitely not the peace settlement itself, that's a real shame because not only could they do some good from the bottom up, in context that they obviously know well it's there operating in their own countries, that would be a real shame because it wouldn't also not just support the peace process itself but also there's more evidence that leads to more durable outcomes. Great, thank you so much to both of you. I think just to wrap up I'll ask is there anything else from your research that you'd like to share anything else that we didn't cover that you think would be of interest and important takeaways that we haven't gotten to yet? Any final thoughts? I mean we could just add in terms of, so we've also looked at kind of conflict of density in which Marina was talking about and so what I mentioned in terms of the case research at Stony Columbia so a lot of kind of nonviolent resistance against armed violence I think of this in terms of kind of violence reduction strategies we're finding evidence of that as well in African context these really difficult African contexts, these kind of stay at home strikes which are common in different kind of contexts we're showing that this is actually reducing conflict of density so that's the other kind of main finding that we have at the moment. Yes indeed and also we in our research we also wanted to kind of also it's looking to conflict intensity and nonviolent tactics different types thereof because sort of the set the same way for a peace process we cannot capture all these dynamics in a very very granular way but we do try to take care and really explore also conflict intensity and how these conflict dynamics can also in fact the likelihood of a peace process. Great. Well thank you so much to both of you for sharing some of the findings from this groundbreaking research with us. It's really exciting to hear and we look forward to the final publication of your work. So Dr. Abbs and Petrova have shared some of the broad statistical patterns the shape nonviolent action in civil war peace processes but we're also curious of course of what this looks like on the ground and so that's the question that we'll take on with our next panel coming up right now. I'm joined now by three outstanding panelists to discuss nonviolent action in civil war peace processes and a little bit more depth. First Dr. Estra Chouhadar is senior expert for dialogue and peace processes here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. She conducts research on a wide range of peace building topics including inclusive peace processes, mediation, track-to-diplomacy and the role of civil society in peace building. Jacob Bolbior is an activist focused on promoting social change and active citizenship in South Sudan he's a founding member and the media coordinator of Ana Taban a youth-driven initiative that uses art as a platform for the youth of South Sudan to speak out on national issues. And finally we have Wahid Zahir. Wahid is a journalist and peace building trainer working to promote sustainable peace and justice in Afghanistan. Thank you so much to all of you for being here this morning I'm really excited to get to have this conversation with all of you. And I'd like to turn to Estra first. Estra, I'm curious about how Dr. Abz Patrova's research resonates with other work that USIP and you yourself have done on dialogue and negotiation processes in the context of civil wars. Thank you, Jonathan. It actually resonates a lot. And as someone looking at their research from a dialogue negotiation mediation perspective I found a lot of connections between what we're doing and the dialogue literature and what they're working on. To begin with, let me just give you two examples but to begin with I think it is really great that they have shown that different tactics different non-violent action tactics are useful at different stages of a peace process. I think this is really something that we needed terribly in this area. So, for example, different tactics are more effective in the negotiation onset stage and different types of tactics are more important on negotiation peace agreement stage. I think it would be really interesting to also look at whether the same tactics or which tactics are also effective in the implementation stage because that's one part that we're really struggling with at the moment. A lot of peace agreements that are negotiated successfully fail within zero to five years. And we also see in some cases that non-violent action or civil resistance movements continue to engage with the process in the implementation phase too. So, I would also be curious to hear what they think about how non-violent action continues in the implementation phase, for example. That's one area that resonated a lot with our work. The other thing, the other example is I think we can use some of their findings in how we think about inclusive modalities and inclusion modalities in peace processes. I think that would be very useful just to give an example. So, for instance, I've done a lot of research on track two dialogues and one key issue in track two dialogues is, you know, how do you transfer the outcomes, the recommendations from these dialogue workshops to track one negotiations or to public opinion, etc. And I think, and one of, usually, you know, we divide these strategies into two, as insider strategies and outsider strategies. But it also, their research gives us a lot of ideas about which strategy can be useful at what stage in order to successfully or more effectively transfer from dialogue to other domains, for instance. Lobbying, for instance, is used as one tactic. And it would be interesting to really look at whether lobbying or political engagement is a better strategy for track two practitioners at a certain phase of a peace process similar to what they found or not. So that's another thing that really resonated with me. And the last comment, perhaps, that I can make is related to my research on, my recent research on inclusive commissions and their role and their effect on durable peace. The authors, our researchers also mentioned that that there is an interesting literature developing on what effects or what kind of inclusion modalities affect durable peace. And the Liberia example they gave is very interesting in this sense, because in Liberia, we see two critical things. Liberia is a case with high-durable peace, by the way. So it's a relatively very successful case. And we see that actually, as the researchers mentioned, nonviolent action, we see that at the negotiation onset. We see actually nonviolent action also in the peace agreement, the agreement making stage. But when you also look at the successful implementation phase in Liberia, we see that, for example, a lot of these civil society representatives, some of them coming from the nonviolent movement, are represented widely in inclusive commissions that are set up to implement the peace agreement, for instance. And one finding that we have in our current research with Dan Druckmann finds that inclusive commissions has the highest impact on durable peace. And Liberia is a case where we see actually many inclusive commissions set up for the implementation phase. And in a lot of these commissions, we see some representatives of the nonviolent movement as well, like these women who were there from the beginning. So I think it is really interesting. And it really raised a lot of questions for me in this sense, too. And another area this research really, I think, could be very useful for us is, can we really extend the effect of nonviolent movements to durable peace by also somehow engaging them in these implementation phase institutions like commissions or transitional justice mechanisms, et cetera. Because we know there are a lot of examples of this, that civil society inclusion in these mechanisms. But how connected this civil society inclusion in these mechanisms is to the initial nonviolent movements is one question to look at, I think. I'll stop here. Thank you. It's fascinating. Great. Wonderful. No, thank you so much, Esther. I agree. And this is a really crucial point about, you know, not just thinking about what leads to a negotiation and then what leads to an agreement, but what makes that agreement stick over time and what kinds of tactics by nonviolent movements can influence that. I think to get sort of some of that grassroots perspective, Jacob, I'd like to turn to you next. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the ways that citizens have been using nonviolent action to advocate for peace in South Sudan, both your own kind of experience and then any reactions you might have to the research discussion that we've been having as well. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Nonviolent action has been really a major stone in shaping the peace deal in South Sudan before, during and after the signing of the peace in South Sudan. Looking at some of the incidences that happened before the peace deal, we had individuals writing op-ed doing different kinds of protest based on what was happening in South Sudan. And these individuals were either detained, arrested, or even killed. But looking at that, they had to strategize further and come up with different ideas on how we could use nonviolent tactic or actions to be able to tackle some of these issues and also advocate and talk about peace in South Sudan. So in 2017, actually, we decided to form an initiative called Anatabah and has creatives of South Sudan in order to be able to find ways on how to influence the peace processes or also on how to get the masses involved and be able to speak up on issues of conflict in the country. Because in as much as the peace that was signed in 2015 was a bit inclusive, there were a lot of voices that were not included in the signing of that peace. And we saw what happened. In 2016, the conflict again happened after two months of then Vice President, actually the current Vice Vice President came back to South Sudan and then the formation of the government was done. Two months after that, there was conflict. So we decided on different forms of nonviolent action that we can use in order to influence the process and hold these individuals accountable. So we came together as collectives and used creative tactics in order to be able to speak up and not just as an individual, not just like Jacob, but as a collective, as an artistic platform, Anatabah. And when we did this, we saw some bit of improvement and responses. I'll give you an example of one of the incidences that one of the things that got actually involved in the peace talk in 2017. When they started the peace talk in August in 2017, in December 2017, we decided to come up with an initiative or a campaign called South Sudan is watching campaign. And with this campaign, we brought together different artists, visual artists, musicians, poets and all creators within the country to speak out on the issues that are being deliberated in Addis Ababa by these political parties and telling them that in as much as you're deliberating in that hall, we are here watching how South Sudan is. And we are trying to see what you guys are going to come up with. Is it that you're going to look up to your position or are you looking at the suffering of the people of South Sudan? Those who are in the refugee camp and those who are within the country. And this is something that has never been done before during these peace processes. People have never mobilized and get together and try to question them as they were going to start deliberating on peace deal. So this action actually made some of us to be invited, including myself to Addis Ababa and participate in the peace talk. And while we were there, we also decided to go with some of our paintings that we had done in Juba. One of our artists did a painting of different parts of like the South Sudan that he wants to see and the South Sudan that we are in now trying to unfold, trying to fold the back part of South Sudan and bringing up a South Sudan of progress where the South Sudan where we're living together where we are coexisting regardless of our diversity. And when we did this, we went to Addis and we printed some of this painting in small papers and those who were in the room actually went with these papers and distributed to all the political parties who are in the room. So it created some conversation in the room and some sense of urgency that South Sudanese or the citizens themselves are actually watching us and they're seeing what we're doing here with the action that they have done here and bringing these papers to the room that means they're waiting for us to see what we're going to come back with. So with that, there was some sense of this action accelerating the peace process and the political parties getting to at least reach some level of agreement and that's what came up with the peace deal that we have now. And after the peace deal, we also decided to at least have some sense of political engagement because there were some political parties who were not part of the deal that were out of the deal and I remember we had a group of us who went to meet the team of Thomas Cirillo though we did not succeed in that, we tried to advocate and talk to him on giving the issues that South Sudanese are facing because in real sense, most of our political elites in Juba they do not actually go to the grassroot and they don't know what people are facing and as much as they have their position they just want to be there. So what has seen over time with the civil society and most of the activists engaging the citizens and having them to be the ones to bring forth the issues that they are facing there has been some level of improvement and sustainability of the peace in the country. Thank you, Jacob. It's great to hear that. Wahid, I'd like to turn to you. You've also been involved in Grassroots Peace Building and nonviolent action for peace in Afghanistan. What can you tell us about how ordinary people in Afghanistan are working for peace and the kinds of tactics that you've been using that have been most effective there? Thank you. Thank you so much. First of everything, I would like to say that there are millions of ordinary people in Afghanistan. All of them may not work for peace but at least everyone is praying and wishing for peace in Afghanistan. If we collect all the politicians there may be around 200 and 300 but the public is very large and there are more, there are a lot but the public cannot work, they cannot come together because the problems which are produced due to the war and the problems which are created for war from some people who has some interest at war, there are a lot and these problems could be hunger, incompetence, lack of courage and we can say that even they don't have basic facilities of living so they cannot work in both sides. There are some people, they work for peace. For example, I can mention there are some societies, there are some movements, even there are some individuals who are working for peace and they are using for example, they are marching, they have some poetry competitions, debate competitions, they are working in education field for promoting the culture of peace and for promoting the culture of non-violent intolerance but it will take in here in Afghanistan and I have been engaged and a lot with university students we were working to promote peace through debate and I think it is very necessary and I think we should have started from very beginning. There are some people who are still working in this field and I think it will work a lot and it will have a very good result and we also had some competitions as I mentioned before we had some art festivals because we can do all these things and we are working in this regard and what I believe a lot according to my experience I have started peace education five years ago and around six years ago I believe if we have a curriculum for peace in all our academic institutions or academic centres it will have a very good impact for our people because I believe we cannot have a very sustainable and a very peaceful country just in one in two years or just in five years it will take time and we need to work a lot in this regard. Thank you Waheed. I would be curious to hear from either of you Jacob or Waheed. One of the things that Dr. Abbas and Dr. Petrova were talking about was that Dr. Choudler was mentioning just before this is this sort of impact of different kinds of tactics at different stages before the negotiations, during the negotiations and then during the implementation phase as well. I'm curious if you've seen anything like this in your own countries are there certain things that worked better for you when it was before leading to negotiations or during negotiations what are your thoughts on these impacts of different tactics at different times? Thank you. All the techniques which were mentioned before they are very important but according to Dr. Abbas root peace builders current and right now there are some peace builders, some peace activists who oversees this procedure of peace negotiation and they will judge and they are judging that what are good for our future and what are not good for our future so in this situation at least they need to arise their vices what they need in Afghanistan like in the future and if there are some problems and if we need something in this procedure so we can have for example some media, social media campaigns we can raise our vices through media and even we can start some non-cooperations tactics like by cards with some of their things we can say their announcements Jacob what are your thoughts on this question? I think actually some of these tactics work differently based on that what is happening at that particular time because in real sense there are times when practice will work during the process of negotiation before the negotiation or even after the negotiation so for the implementation process but then it depends, it's context specific it depends on how you read the atmosphere on what is happening and how the stakeholders are actually coming forward with the peace deal so I definitely think that all these processes work but they work differently based on how we started the atmosphere first and how the people who are negotiating that peace or the the stakeholders to what the peace deal are so looking at the context specific and the atmosphere itself Great thanks Jacob Esther I'll turn back to you I'm curious we've brought up and you were mentioning before that looking at non-violent action or even just the inclusion of civil society is often something that may not factor into how many international peace builders think about peace processes what are some of the changes or messages that you wish the international peace building community would get and some lessons learned from both the research that we talked about earlier here as well as your own could be spread more Jonathan I think what is really key in this research for the international peace building community is that it really pushes us into thinking more about the complementarity between different tools we have called them tools but different either peace building tools or non-violent action tools and the key here is to find really which ones work better together at what stage of a peace process and in that sense this research project really gives us some really useful ideas in that sense for instance you asked the question about pre-negotiation, negotiation, implementation while all of these different stages of a peace process they have different needs they have different dynamics so a pre-negotiation stage for example is usually more confidential because this is the stage where the elites sort of try to explore whether the other side is willing to really negotiate in good faith or not, whether it is feasible or not they are also testing the waters they are exploring what agenda would be possible and this is a period where you see negotiation commitment as a serious problem so that is a very different need in the negotiation process than later on as the negotiations become more public they become more visible then it becomes more important to generate public buy-in for example it becomes more important that the negotiation process is locally owned is seen as legitimate so there are very different needs at different stages and I think it is really crucial for the international peace building community to think that we know that and this research also shows that it is non-violent action in the same way does not work equally effectively at all of these stages but there is a non-major lesson that the international peace building community should draw I think from this research but I guess also there is also a lot to be learned by the non-violent action community here too, not just the peace building community to really think about what is the need of the negotiation process at this moment and if there is a need for confidentiality and transparency rather than non-cooperation but on the other hand if the negotiations are stuck if there is a stalemate or if the peace agreement if some parties are foot dragging and not implementing what is agreed in the peace agreement then it really makes a lot of sense to think about non-cooperation and other intervention tactics for example so I think it requires a mutual reassessment both in the peace building community and how they engage the non-violent activists and non-violent action tactics but also it requires a lot of reassessment and thinking I guess on the non-violent action community too like what is the proper way to engage in the negotiation process Wonderful thanks Esra Jacob I'll turn to you next just a broad question I'm curious what things do you wish international peace builders knew about the work of activists like yourselves to fight for peace in your countries and how can international peace builders be better partners for groups like yours Great that's a fantastic question I've been actually in so many conversations these things have come up and how we feel like to be supported or being better partners in whatever we do and as I said earlier different context matters to different people at different times because in real sense it's a game of push back with the political elites looking at activists they look at activists at people who are against the political ambitions against their will and all that so they will try by any means to do anything to try and push back the activists and Uma will be competing to influence these are the masses and give them certain information the politician will try in one way or other to try and also counter whatever information you are giving them and at some point some of us have been called the mouthpiece of the west you are doing this and that or maybe you are just advocating for the interests of this specific organization and that so it's good to look at how activists brand themselves and also try to understand how they are approaching some of their issues that they are facing because most of these issues are complex so I think the best thing that international peace builders or partners that I would wish them to understand is that first it's good to understand the context of which some of these or some of us like activists are coming from and how what strategies have we employed in order to be able to try and break through barriers it looks like we may have, Jacob may have dropped off the call or at least his video is frozen so I think Wahid I will turn to you then with the same question actually about what do you wish international peace builders knew about the work of activists like yourselves and how can they be better partners for people like you who are doing this on the ground peace building work Wahid you are muted so if you could unmute yourself please Thank you I just want to say that as I said before it will take some time here in Afghanistan as we are working for sustainable peace and for justice in Afghanistan it will take some time but I just wanted to say for some international peace builders are peace activists if they are listening about Afghanistan or they are hearing Afghanistan Afghanistan may have very bad stories but they also have some very good and positive stories and for a kind of appreciating back and also reflects these positive and good stories of Afghanistan with others and I just wanted to say some international peace builders peace builders that we need such online events even if we cannot manage offline events and in these events we will be able to share our experience with each others I understand that it matters what is the context of a conflict and what is where is the geography it depends upon the culture it depends upon the norms of everywhere but at least we can share our experience we can share where and how kind of tactics work there so I need I need that we should have a very good relationships through social media through such events that ESIP is managing or any other NGOs Wonderful thank you so much Wahid and I think with that we will wrap up our conversation and I would like to say thank you once again to Esra, Jacob and Wahid for sharing your insights with us and for all that you do to work for peace thanks to all of you for joining us as well the next event in our people power peace and democracy series will be held live on April 20th at 10 a.m. Eastern where we will be having a discussion of how inclusive dialogue and negotiation processes can help foster democracy in transitions initiated on violent action and we hope you'll join us