 Our third and final speaker for this TED Talks series is USIP's own Dr. Maria Stefan who directs our program on nonviolent action here at the Institute. It focuses on applied research, training, and education, and informing policies and practice related to civil resistance, nonviolent action, and the roles in transforming violent conflict and advancing just peace. She was formerly the nonresident fellow, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council where she co-led the future of authoritarianism project. Previously Stefan was also the lead foreign affairs officer at the US State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations where she worked on both policy and operations for Afghanistan and Syria. She's also the editor of civilian jihad, nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East as the co-editor of is authoritarianism staging a comeback, and is the co-author of why civil resistance works, the strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. Please help me welcome to the stage Dr. Maria Stefan. Last TED Talk of the day my name is Maria Stefan and I direct the program on nonviolent action here at the US Institute of Peace and I have spent most of my professional life working with writing about and otherwise seeking to support activists and organizers who are leading nonviolent movements around the world. So for the next few minutes I will discuss the role of civil resistance otherwise known as nonviolent action or people power in preventing violent extremism. So let me offer two examples to set the stage. Four years ago in Burkina Faso which we heard about this morning which has been a victim of violent extremist attacks. A grassroots anti-corruption movement mobilized the population to prevent the abuse of power by its president. The Ballet Citoyenne or citizens broom movement which used the broom as a symbol of sweeping away political corruption was led by a group of reggae artists and help mobilize the population after president Kampwari attempted to manipulate the Constitution and extend his mandate. Ballet Citoyenne organized protests musically inspired street theater. Boycott sit-ins other nonviolent tactics to generate pressure which ultimately forced the president to step down from power. More recently this past March in Afghanistan after a gruesome Taliban attack in Helmand province that killed scores of civilians. Ordinary Afghans from Helmand began to organize protests denouncing the violence and demanding peace talks. The protests spread to other parts of the country and culminated in a 300 mile march from Helmand to Kabul in the scorching hot sun in the midst of dust storms. The marchers incidentally spoke with Taliban fighters along the way and when they arrived in Kabul the marchers organized sit-ins in front of Afghan government offices in foreign embassies. This nascent movement has brought Afghans together across tribal divisions. It has involved men and women young and old to up the ante for a negotiated peace. Both of these examples feature ordinary people who were fed up with violence and repression and who decided to take action to do something. They use civil resistance which is a method of struggle that involves tactics of protests and persuasion like vigils, rallies, marches, methods of non-cooperation like civil disobedience, boycott strikes and methods of nonviolent intervention like sit-ins in the building of parallel structures and institutions and they use these methods to disrupt the status quo and to shift power dynamics in their societies without the use of violence. Civil resistance has been used in every region of the world in all cultures and by adherence of all the world's major religions including Islam. It's been used to advance women's rights in Pakistan to end civil war in Liberia and to challenge authoritarianism in Tunisia and corruption in the Philippines. Nonviolent movements are rooted in communities and they are led by those people who are most affected by injustices including and notably youth. Leaders of extremist groups often claim that violence is necessary to challenge tyranny and oppression that it is the only meaningful way to resist violent kleptocratic and exclusionary systems. However we know that this is not true. A few years ago my colleague Erika Chenoweth and I collected and analyzed data on close to 330 major violent and nonviolent campaigns over the past century. We intentionally chose the tough cases that involve challenging mostly repressive authoritarian regimes willing and able to use violence to stay in power. We found somewhat counterintuitively that the nonviolent campaigns were twice as successful as their armed counterparts. The primary factor in determining the outcomes of these campaigns was the size and diversity of participation. Significantly more people can participate in nonviolent resistance compared to armed struggle or terrorism and when large numbers of people withdraw their consent in cooperation from an oppressive system or an armed group and they engaged in organized non-cooperation the system can no longer wield effective control so you can win without violence. But civil resistance is not simply about protesting and stubbornly saying no. It is also about building positive alternatives and saying yes. Erika and I found in the research that nonviolent resisting resistance campaigns contribute significantly to democratization even in places where the campaigns failed to achieve their goals. This finding has been backed by seven or eight other independent studies and this is because the inclusive participatory nature of nonviolent movements is conducive to building social trust and building systems grounded in a respect for human rights. Not only is nonviolent resistance an effective means of resisting the injustices that fuel radicalization. It is also empowering. There is a reason why it is called people power. We know that people join extremist groups to be part of something bigger than themselves. To make sacrifices for what they believe in. One of ISIS's main messages for recruiting youth was simply join us and help build an ideal society where you will always belong. Joining a nonviolent movement provides many of the same psychosocial benefits as these groups. I've heard from countless activists around the world that their participation in nonviolent action has offered them a sense of agency, of being part of a community and a sense of purpose. Movements like Balaisitoyen and Burkina Faso and the Anataban or I am tired youth led movement in South Sudan, like many others around the world have used humor and satire as we've seen symbols, rituals and slogans that have helped build a sense of cohesion and solidarity that inspires and attracts others to join the cause. Silver resistance is life affirming and its creative potential is boundless. So there are positive effects of nonviolent action at the level of the individual, but also at the community level, where there is evidence that nonviolent organizing contributes to resilience. Michael Markusa conducted a fascinating comparative study of various villages in Tunisia. He found that those villages with a history of nonviolent organizing experienced lower levels of violent extremist recruitment compared to those with no history of nonviolent organizing. Other research by Lauren Van Meter, Jonas Klays, found that communities that focused on communities in Kenya found that those that featured high levels of self-organizing and that built autonomous governance structures were less likely to experience extremist infiltration compared to those where such organizing did not exist. So in summary, nonviolent resistance offers a propulsive, propulsive and effective way of representing grievances and of resisting injustices. It offers many of the same psychosocial benefits as joining terrorist groups and it helps build community resilience. Now let me conclude by offering a few ideas for practitioners and policymakers. First, by now it should be a truism that investing in locally driven community led approaches to preventing violent extremism is both sensible and strategic. Policymakers should amplify the work of grassroots movement leaders, center them in decision making processes and ensure that their voices are featured prominently in national and global policy forums. Secondly, governments, international organizations and NGOs can use the carrots and sticks at their disposal to help keep civic space open around the world in places where it is closing. They can use diplomatic, economic and military to military tools to mitigate violence targeting nonviolent activists and to curb the predatory repressive practices of other governments and their security forces that fuel violent extremism. Finally, outside actors cannot create movements, nor should they but they can support the transfer of skills and knowledge about how to wage nonviolent struggle effectively. They can provide the convening spaces to help civic actors in fragile and conflict affected states to plan strategically and to learn from other activists. They can help influential civic leaders tell their nation's often buried histories of nonviolent resistance through educational and media channels, something that organizations like ours in the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict focus on. Equipping a grieved, oppressed people with knowledge and skills about how to organize in their communities and build powerful movements to advance rights and freedoms is a critical ingredient in the fight against violent extremism. Thank you very much.