How Communities Keep Themselves Safe

Peace Wanted podcast features Mel Duncan, founder of Nonviolent Peace Force

Speaker A: Welcome to the Peace Wanted podcast. Welcome. today I'm talking to Mel Duncan, who is founder of Nonviolent Peace Force and, an arms, William Protection, and lifelong activist for social change. So bringing with him, ton of ideas and experience. Thank you so much for joining us, today, Mel. Your work and your life's so full of stories and reflections and achievements. I know that we're only going to scratch the surface, but I'd love you to sort of join us and share about why this is so important and the building of peace in our communities.

Speaker B: Good to be with you, Rachel, as always.

Civilian protection and accompaniment is key to our mutual survival

Speaker A: So obviously, you've been around since sort of like the development of an armed civilian protection through lots of different countries like that. and I'm sure you have a quick way of explaining this work. So why do we need to know about civilians protecting civilians?

Speaker B: Well, it's a key element of our mutual survival. The UN High Commission on Refugees reported last year that during this year we will surpass 100 million of us who have had to flee our homes because of violent conflict and persecution. And that number will rise because of the climate catastrophe, increasing authoritarianism and rising militarism. And if we look at all the current approaches that are designed to protect civilians and to help people stay home, and if we stack them all together and for the sake of this conversation said that they're all effective, and I don't believe that they are for a moment. But if we said that they were, and if we said all the military approaches, whether they be state or multilateral, and all the unarmed approaches, whether they be state, multilateral or done by civil society organizations, and if we stack those all together, they would not come close to meeting present need. And they will not come close at all to meeting the soaring need. And so if we're serious about working with people and helping them to stay home, and more importantly, supporting them to help themselves to stay home, we have to look at effective and affordable and attractive ways for them to be able to stay home and unarmed. Civilian protection and accompaniment is one of those key ways where people will be able to face these emerging threats to their very livelihoods in existence and be able to keep their families and themselves safe. And so this is an important approach as we face the emerging problems of this century.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says climate change is worsening

Speaker A: You talked quite a bit there about the risks and the threats and all of that. And they're pretty huge at the moment in terms of number of wars, number of cities that experience violence and different types of violence. And you say they're sort of like this is just going to grow.

Speaker A: What might that mean? I mean, is that because they get isolated? Or is it because nobody takes any notice of them?

Speaker B: Yes, it can be because they're isolated. It can be because they're not respected. It can be because they're overrun. it can be because Westerners have come in and literally run over them. It, can be because they're patriarchal, societies where the role of women in holding together the community has not been recognized. And it's a matter of helping to lift that role up and support what's already being done has been sublimated. For example, in a village called Pebor in South Sudan, our team was there once, and it was right after there had been a vicious attack. And so there was a community security meeting and our team sat in on it and it was all men. And so after the meeting, Lisa asked well, where are the women? And she was politely told well, security is men's work. And so our team sat HM, around for a few days and listened and asked questions like when you want something done, who do you talk? A woman by the name of Mary. Her name kept coming up and I got to meet Mary. And so after a few days they went and talked to know what were the security needs and she said that women were being routinely raped by government soldiers who were walking through the, the little village. and they walked through the Paell on the way to their barracksudan. Barracks are series of huts where the soldiers live and that they often are drunk. And that the women were being raped at the community garden and at the water point. And so that the community garden was not being tended and so that was having a concept of the vegetables were not being harvested or not being grown as they talked. Lisa and the team you know, should we have a conversation about this and have a community meeting? And Mary said tell me the date and time or the place and time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So they set up time and Mary came walking up the road with 70 women.

Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing.

Speaker B: And what they established was a very simple protection system based upon what we call a phone tree, mhm? One person calls two people, they each call people and not everyone in the PIAM had a mobile phone, mhm? But there was a cellular relay tower and so really everyone was within about 200 meters of someone who had a mobile phone. And so they set all this up and then they identified indicators and usually it was drunk headed for the water point or for the garden. And once they identified that someone would call and the phone, system light up. And so what their response was that they would call our team who was staying nearby and a group of women and our team would either go to the water point or to the garden, mhm? And seeing that, would walk on. They eliminated rape.

Speaker A: Amazing.

Speaker B: And interesting, side effect was there was ah, a battalion of UN peacekeepers who were living just a couple kilometers away. And when they saw this happening, we convinced them to start just doing routine patrols just to drive around and their presence known. And then we convinced them to start collecting their water at the water point. And so that established their visible presence. And the women also found this very funny that men would be collecting water and that further the government soldiers did not want to look bad in front of these UN peacekeepers. And so when I was there, which was about four months after this began and it was on Independence Day, I stood next to an officer of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army who had come to teach the soldiers about gender based violence prevention.

Speaker A: No, that's amazing.

Speaker B: And I stood next to each other and watched a football game that was being played during the holiday and talked about this whole thing and he was there because of Mary and that prevention team and it all happened when you go back to the charity meeting and Lisa asked him where are the women?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the women were there and they.

Speaker A: Knew what to amazing. So it's so important. So much of this seems to be about listening to people and actually sort of being acknowledging that they've got so it sounds a bit like some of the tools are things that people don't even realize they could do. To me it sounds a little bit like when we train people to do nonviolent resistance that people know that they want to complain and they know, want to change something. But they need some help with understanding what the tools are about what they.

Speaker B: Could do and understanding their agency that they can make a difference in the situation. Because so often people have been treated as objects and have been really pounded into them that they cannot make a difference wow. When in fact they make a difference all the time.

Speaker A: They do. And being able to have that voice. I like the idea that you have a community security meeting because it makes it sound like security is something that the community should be bothered about and not just the military.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I have been told that there is a difference here. That safety is something the community does, security is something that's imposed. So I think there's a difference there.

Speaker A: Okay? Yeah. So if you're safe in your community yeah. That'd be great.

How can unarmed civilian protection and accompaniment support community safety and protection

Speaker A: So you've watched this field change and grow over quite a long time. What do you think are some of the big questions facing it at the moment? I mean you've talked about the growing risk and maybe the growing need that isn't yet met. Are there some other big questions that people need to be or are asking about?

Speaker B: One question is how can unarmed civilian protection and accompaniment be used as a tool to support community safety and protection and also mutual safety?

Speaker A: So it's not just one on their own.

Speaker B: Yeah. And there's some very interesting, work that's being done in New York, in the US. Among the Asian and Pacific Islander, American community. And one of the chants there is who protects us, we protect.

Speaker A: M. That and powerful, isn't it?

Speaker B: Yes. And the attacks on American, Asian and Pacific Islander, people have skyrocketed, over the last couple of years and that's been intentionally encouraged by former President Trump and by other white supremacists, So it is a matter of working with communities, on self protection and mutual protection. And so Nonviolent peace force has been training thousands of people in mutual, protection. And that's a question of how does UCP support that kind of work and work closely with communities. Because the old model that we started actually NP with of sending well trained cadres of internationals into communities, while that's important in areas of acute crisis conflicts, that's not sustainable. And so how do we use that as a multiplier? And the questions of scale and sustainability are something that have to trouble us constantly.

Speaker A: But that sounds like the mutuality and things like that is you found it everywhere. From your stories and what you've talked about, you've already seen that people are capable, of course. So actually finding a way to bring that where UCP and civilian protection is going is bringing out all of that mutual M power for creating safety or safe spaces. I'm not sure.

Speaker B: Yes, and I do want to emphasize that another thing that we've learned is that unarmed civilian protection and accompaniment is a systems approach that as we did the regional Good Practices workshops. I remember after a couple of them, questions were asked well, when does this work? How does this work? And we would frequently get the response, well, it depends. We were getting frustrated until it dawned on us. Of course it's contextual. Of course that's what people are saying, that it's contextual. It's highly dependent upon the current conditions. Therefore unarmed civilian protection has to be extremely nimble and has change in the mix and the proportion of methodologies that we use. And that can only happen when you're in close communication with the communities because they're the only ones who really can translate as to what's happening and what needs to change. And so I don't want to overly romanticize self protection because that can get dangerous and it could end up getting a lot of people killed. There are times when internationals are needed and we should not shy away from that in the name some kind of political correctness. If that's required, then we need to do it. And we would err on the side of being called colonialists. Yeah, I'd rather be called that and have some people live. and so there are times where only local people are not going to be a deterrent and we need to recognize that. But there are lots of other times when internationals are not going to be deterrence. We have to closely assess that and then respond accordingly.

Speaker A: I always find it that it's very important to not go, well, we empower communities and then we just leave them by themselves. because actually the importance of it is that they are either connected to other people or growing their own power or sort of changing what they do but not feeling like they've been left alone. So it's not an excuse to leave them. It's huge potential, isn't it? Of what people can do.

Speaker B: And sometimes the physical expression of solidarity is very important. And we found with surveying the various UCP and accompaniment groups, that solidarity is very strong in terms of importance. it ranks, about two thirds of the organizations say that that's an important expression of their work.

Speaker A: And it is so powerful, isn't it? Because you see it across a whole range of things where people actually, once they connect and listen and support one another, those relationships and networks are so much stronger.

Speaker B: And I'm not alone here.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. That's so powerful.

Who would you bring into this conversation if you could not this?

Speaker A: Who would you bring into this conversation if you could not this? The conversation about how we better do protection and make communities safer.

Speaker B: gandhi and Baird ruston christina Fagettis.

Speaker A: Wow. So bring in some of the really big, some of the big nonviolence ideas on how we change things, probably maud Royden oh, yeah. Tick the hand. So we need big ideas.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: We need this to be big. Nonviolence is really important for you in thinking about how this works.

Speaker B: If we're not nonviolent at it, it doesn't work. And Rachel. That was interesting. when we surveyed the various UCP practitioners, 95 plus percent of them identified nonviolence as a central pillar to their work.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And that's shared across the field.

Speaker A: That's really important to talk about, isn't it?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: This isn't, a toolkit you take off the shelf. This is something which is about the power that we have, and the way we work together.

Speaker B: And it's a central pillar.

Speaker A: Central pillar to it. That's fantastic.

Speaker B: Erica Chenweth would be another person I'd bring in.

Speaker A: So we've got some more big conversations to have.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I bring in you and.

Speaker A: Yeah. So this is turning into quite a party that we're going to have to grow this movement.

Speaker B: Tiffany. Gary Slutkin.

Speaker A: There must be a ton of people.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what's exciting. And we're getting more and more every day.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That's one of the hopeful things that is hopeful. Over 60 of us. Organizations, that are doing this kind of work, and that's the ones that we know about.

Speaker A: That's amazing. Well, you've been a lot about this is so hopeful that we can do this. But I think, actually, the whole notion that there is a way of communities and civilians working and protecting one another, because I agree with you, I think there's going to be some testing times coming, for people and the people that they live near and the people they live with. And so if some of what we're talking about can be brought into that, that would be very exciting. but do you know what? This be a fascinating, really lovely conversation. Mal, thank you very much, for for sharing that and your stories with us.

Speaker B: You're welcome, Rachel.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's fantastic. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you for joining us. Come back soon.