Civilian Unarmed Peacekeeping: Peacework’s New Frontier
Statement by Mel Duncan, Executive Director, Nonviolent Peaceforce
Canadian Mission at the United Nations, New York, 24 June 2008

Thank you, Counselor Hulan—and thank you very much for organizing this important briefing-and-dialogue opportunity.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are here today to discuss an emerging, practical tool that can be utilized to protect civilians caught in violent conflicts. Civilian unarmed peacekeeping, otherwise known as proactive presence or nonviolent peacekeeping, has been developed over the past quarter century by various NGOs, local CSOs and in some cases governments and multilateral organizations. These efforts have been primarily small scale and voluntary but in recent years they have accelerated and are focusing on increased professionalism and moving to larger scale.

Civilian unarmed peacekeepers are currently demonstrating their effectiveness in places like Colombia, , the Philippines Sri Lanka and Guatemala. Successes are being documented, failures analyzed and capacity built on an international basis. This type of peacekeeping is most often carried out on a nonpartisan basis in partnership with local organizations and coordinated with other INGOs and UN agencies. For example, in the Nonviolent Peaceforce peacekeeping project in Sri Lanka we were invited by a coalition of 400 local organizations and cooperate with Oxfam and UNICEF who also provides funding.

Civilian peacekeepers provide a variety of services including:

• Protective accompaniment. For example, a recent project provided one-on-one accompaniment for a 10-months’ period for a group of women’s human rights defenders who had come under increased threat during the election season. Or the accompaniment of mothers in another country as they seek the return of their children who have been abducted by the militias and other armed groups.
• Protective presence to communities under threat as Peace Brigades International has been doing in another country.
• Other services include local peace monitoring, creating neutral safe spaces, providing informal mediation, bridging local concerns to national and international arenas and inter-positioning—all right where vulnerable, threatened people live and often work in some rather remote places.

The presence of civilian peacekeepers often enhances the work of local peacebuilders and aid workers and provides them with protection so that they can conduct their work more effectively.

In the past few years civilian unarmed peacekeeping has created several significant assets including:

• The structural capacity to recruit, screen, train, deploy and support civilian unarmed peacekeepers.
• Core curricula and a growing number of trainers.
• A career path which included adequate pay which is attractive enough so that civilian peacekeepers commit to longer assignments.
• Field activities based upon thorough analysis and well developed strategies.
• Conflict sensitive evaluation tools are maturing.
• A network of 76 membership organizations throughout the world who are committed to building a large scale civilian Peaceforce.
• A constituency of individual donors, foundations and faith-based institutions plus some bilateral governmental donors and UN agencies.
• Finally, a growing number of people ready and able to carry out this work. Their online register now counts 450 people from 72 countries.

Furthermore, the demand for our services is increasing. Civilian peacekeeping organizations are currently receiving many more requests from CSOs in areas of violent conflict.

I do not want to romanticize this work nor pretend that civilian unarmed peacekeeping is an off-the-shelf, finished product. Much still needs to be learned, and there are many dilemmas and challenges.

Undoubtedly the biggest challenge we face is access to significant funding. In this context it is heartening that OECD/DAC’s new definition now includes an “enhanced civil society’s role in the security system” and “civilian activities for peacebuilding, conflict prevention and conflict resolution”. Under this expanded definition, new security-related initiatives would now be eligible for donor funding.

We would hope that this meeting will mark the beginning of the international community’s practical support for the concept and practice of civilian unarmed peacekeeping. Unarmed peacekeeping could become a standard item in the checklist of DPKO and OCHA mission planning. Donors from the global North and South could fund the creation of a reserve capacity, and of a ready-response force. Member states contributing UN Peacekeepers could second selected ex-Blue Helmet veterans to undertake unarmed peacekeeping tasks in the civilian sector. The UN Volunteers could become more actively involved in civilian unarmed peacekeeping. NP would welcome undertaking pre-service training for peacekeepers for other organizations, or jointly with UNITAR and DPKO. And perhaps, a Global Commission on Unarmed Peacekeeping could be set up to study and recommend best practices.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, in a world with the potential to see more, not less, violent conflict, large-scale nonviolent conflict transformation is not an option, but an imperative. Civilian unarmed peacekeeping is a contribution that global civil society stands now ready to make, as an effective tool for protecting civilians on a much larger scale. On this, the 60th anniversary of UN Peacekeeping and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it would be a fitting tribute to the visionary pioneers who gave the world these historic contributions.

Thank you.