By Christine Schweitzer

Civilian peacekeeping is about protecting people from violence in conflict situations and preventing violence through the presence of unarmed peacekeepers on the ground.

Civilian peacekeeping (or unarmed civil protection, as this approach is known today) is based on unarmed, trained civilian experts establishing a permanent presence in a conflict area. They combine activities directly aimed at preventing violence with those aimed at bringing conflicting parties together and strengthening the ability of local communities to resist escalations of violence.

How can this work?

Many people find it difficult to understand what unarmed peacebuilders can achieve in a violent environment, as they are used to thinking that violence can be the only source of protection. It is true that unarmed civilians have no means to directly enforce anything and cannot defend themselves by force of arms. They cannot kill attackers or stop them with gunfire like soldiers can. However, unarmed peacekeepers have their own sources of power, and the track record of recent years proves them right: unarmed peacekeepers are protected against violence - at least to a certain extent, which varies from place to place - if the teams succeed in building trusting relationships with all parties to the conflict and with the people on the ground. The prerequisites for this are impartiality and independence from state or other particular interests, be they economic, missionary or political. The fact that they themselves are relatively safe is then transferred to the people who accompany them. On the other hand, a potential attacker runs the risk that the international peace experts will publicize violent attacks worldwide, and that this in turn will have negative consequences for the attacker. "The world is watching" is often an effective prevention tool[1].

Areas of responsibility

The main tasks of civilian peacekeeping are the protection of the civilian population in war situations; the protection of particularly threatened groups and communities, such as displaced persons or ethnic minorities, where there is a threat of attacks against such groups; the monitoring of ceasefires, and the protection of human rights defenders. In addition, Civilian Peacekeepers are actively involved in building and strengthening local systems of early warning and early action against the threat of violence.

Implementers

Civilian peacekeeping has so far been practised primarily by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Peace Brigades International (PBI), numerous NGOs active in Palestine and the Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP). For more than fifteen years, the Nonviolent Peaceforce has successfully deployed civilian peacekeeping in civil war zones, including the Philippines, South Sudan, Myanmar and the Middle East (Iraq, Syria).

Political recognition

Civilian peacekeeping has certainly received international recognition, including at state level: On the one hand, states and international (governmental) organizations have carried out unarmed missions themselves. Examples include the Truce Monitoring Group in Bougainville at the end of the 1990s and the Kosovo Verification Mission of the OSCE in 1998-1999. The same applies to churches - think of the observation of the elections in South Africa in 1994 (EMPSA) and the work of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Project Palestine-Israel of the World Council of Churches (EAPPI) in Palestine since 2001.

On the other hand, the work of the Nonviolent Peaceforce has been state-funded by a number of European governments and the EU Commission since 2003/2004. However, these funds are far from sufficient. Nonviolent Peaceforce alone could be active in many more countries and with many more staff if there were sufficient and readily available funds. A peace expert at Nonviolent Peaceforce costs less than 50,000 euros per year (in 2016, calculated on the basis of the organization's total expenditure, it was exactly 50,000 US dollars). Soldiers in foreign missions cost at least twice as much[2].

Furthermore, NGOs that carry out Zviles peacekeeping receive state recognition when they are invited by governments in conflict-affected societies to support peacebuilding. Once again, the Nonviolent Peaceforce is the most important example of this. In the Philippines, it has had official status in the "Civilian Component" of the International Monitoring Team, which monitors the peace process between the government and MILF in Mindanao, since 2010. In South Sudan, it cooperates closely with UNICEF and is also deployed to Myanmar at the invitation of the government. Finally, civilian peacekeeping has been recognized by the United Nations. In cooperation with the UN Institute for Training and Research, the Nonviolent Peaceforce has developed an e-learning course on civilian peacekeeping. Furthermore, the concept is mentioned in several recent UN reports, such as the HIPPO report (a 2015 report by a High Independent Panel on Peace Operations), the Peace Architecture report and the Women, Peace and Security report on the implementation of UN Resolution 1325.

The German government also recognized the instrument in 2017. The guidelines "Preventing crises, managing conflicts, promoting peace" state: "The Federal Government supports the further development of civilian approaches within the framework of the R2P concept and the reform of the UN architecture for peacebuilding, as called for by the High-Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace Operations. In particular, it promotes civilian peacekeeping as a proven methodology to protect people from violence and serious human rights violations."

[1] A comparative study on civilian peacekeeping worth reading is: Furnari, Ellen (ed.) (2016): Wielding Nonviolence in the Face of Violence, Institut für Friedensarbeit und Gewaltfreie Konfliktaustragung, Norderstedt: BoD.

[2]No exact figures per soldier are available for German deployments. France estimates the costs for its soldiers at 100,000 euros per soldier per year.