Deëscalation tip #59: Unarmed civilian protection

Deëscalation in hot conflict zones? Most would assume that would involve bringing in masses of armed forces to keep the peace. No?

No.

Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) is practiced increasingly in areas where people are literally under fire, often in simmering guerrilla v government civil wars. There are many success stories--the first small-but-mighty efforts were by Peace Brigades International in the 1980s, Christian Peacemaking Teams in the 1990s, and now the largest and most globally involved, Nonviolent Peaceforce.

Nonviolent Peaceforce and other UCP groups operate like this, clearly beginning with pre-deëscalation: 

"Relationship-building is at the heart of UCP. It is central to all other UCP methods, as it is through strong relationships with communities affected by armed conflict, armed actors involved in conflict and relevant local and national authorities that UCP practitioners can make their presence known, keep abreast of rapidly changing conflict dynamics, understand the protection needs of communities affected by conflict and take informed action. Facilitated by these strong relationships, UCP methods include advocacy, multi-track dialogue, confidence-building, proactive engagement, (protective) accompaniment, interpositioning, protective presence, rumour control, ceasefire monitoring, early warning early response, capacity enhancement and enhancing self-protection."

That is quite a bundle of serious conflict transformation competencies and forward-thinking practices, all done in various measures in any given conflict in any given locale. When violence is the daily expectation, nothing less will work. While we allow folks with two hours training to join us in the streets of Portland, Oregon, on our peace team, those war zone unarmed workers get months of training in multiple skills.

Applied professionally to the earliest warnings, it can indeed pre-deëscalate, dialing down outbreaks of violence, possibly preventing atrocities, and even transforming hostile pre-war tensions into longer term dialog, even ultimate collaborative efforts toward a commitment to only using nonviolent methods of waging conflict. 

Is all this work really worth it? What if it only stopped one war in just one country every century? What if it only saved a few hundred lives every year?