Sustaining Peace Through Unarmed Civilian Protection

"One does not have to venture far into news headlines to find examples of large-scale violence against unarmed civilians, especially in conflict zones. To address this, policymakers at the United Nations, including Secretary-General António Guterres himself (among others) are shifting from a strategy of “conflict prevention” to “prevention and sustaining peace” (see the April 2016 Security Council and General Assembly resolutions and the secretary-general’s report). In this, we see ample opportunity for the UN to innovate to keep civilians safe. A Global Observatory article from 2015 outlined the evidence-based concept of Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP), and since then, a number of UN reports, reviews, and resolutions has strengthened the case for its use. As was noted in the article, UCP is not without challenges. But current efforts to protect civilians by governments and civil society—armed and unarmed—are failing to keep pace. On each and every day last year, 8,000 people were forced to flee their countries, unchecked climate disruption is poised to escalate violent conflicts and is exacerbating threats to human security. These demands, coupled with the momentum behind sustaining peace, create the nexus to consider new ways to protect civilians in sustainable ways. The High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) recommended in its 2015 report that unarmed strategies must be at the forefront of UN efforts to protect civilians. A synthesis report by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs of HIPPO, plus the other two major global reviews of 2015—on the UN’s peacebuilding architecture and Security Council Resolution 1325 (on women, peace, and security)—found that “all three reports offer a critique of the current privileging of huge, military-heavy peace operations” and that “privileging of militarised solutions by UN peacekeeping operations to violent conflict is counter-productive.” The report additionally noted that “militarised solutions, and the resulting militarisation of society, are detrimental to women’s security.” Since the reviews were released, however, the Security Council has approved more “robust” peacekeeping measures, as seen in Resolution 2327, where the Council authorized the UN mission in South Sudan to use “all necessary means” to protect civilians. Meanwhile, scant attention has been given to unarmed methods for the protection of civilians that inherently sustain peace. Recently addressing the Security Council on peace operations and sustaining peace, International Peace Institute Senior Adviser Youssef Mahmoud, a member of both the HIPPO and the 1325 reviews, recommended a series of shifts required for sustaining peace that recognize people, especially women and youth, who play a central role in local protective capacities. These shifts require respect, trust-building, and continual engagement with local communities, activities which are extremely difficult for armed peacekeepers, who typically rotate into a community every six months, often without the training or interest to engage with community members. Lack of common language and the dominance of men (over 95% of mission contingents on average) provide other barriers for collaborating with local people. As cited in HIPPO and the 1325 review, there are a number of unarmed approaches that can directly protect civilians in violent conflict, with UCP prominent among them. UCP is a series of methods for the direct protection of civilians, localized violence reduction, and supporting local infrastructures for peace. While not appropriate in every situation, UCP can be employed in a number of places where armed peacekeepers cannot or will not go. Work in this field is growing, with 39 NGOs now providing protection in 21 countries, including South Sudan, Iraq, Myanmar, and the United States, including major cities experiencing high levels of violence such as Baltimore and Chicago, as well as North Dakota during the conflict over"