Securing space for local peacebuilding: the role of international and national civilian peacekeepers

Promoting Political Participation in War-torn Countries

“…With respect to the former, I rely on respondents’ self-reported interactions with peacekeepers (i.e., seeing or talking to UNMIL military through patrols) to construct proxies of UNMIL security provision. This is a reasonable proxy since such interactions are presumed to increase people’s perceptions of security (Furnari, Oldenhuis, and Julian 2015). 23 Recent survey work in Liberia supports this intuition.…”

Women as Embodied Infrastructures: Self-Led Organisations Sustaining the Lives of Female Victims of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Colombia

“…Examples of radical care found in our data include developing women's self-led organisations, supporting vulnerable community members (e.g., collecting food and clothes in more affluent parts of the city to distribute among vulnerable members of the community), and creating and nurturing friendship networks with neighbours (e.g., offering compassionate listening and support) (Clisby & Holdsworth, 2016, p. 12). Finally, radical community care includes the instances in which women shield and protect their families and communities from armed actors or the attacks of state agents with their own bodies, acting as unarmed peacekeepers (Furnari et al, 2015). Examples are women like Liliana who faced the paramilitaries to prevent her neighbours being killed, and the Mothers on the Front Line group during the 2021 national strike (Zulver & Stallone, 2021).…”

“…That is not my aim, radical community care wants to make visible, 1) the practices of solidarity required to survive, make, and sustain life in contexts of ongoing violence, 2) The political skills gained by women through their caring roles (Robinson, 2011), 3) The agency deployed by women to self-repair, respond to the dangers of conflict and the precarity of the worlds they inhabit, and 4) women's roles in non-violent peacekeeping and civilian protection work. Framing these activities using a care framework highlights practices that have been rendered invisible, and that can help us to better understand civilian's peacekeeping and peacebuilding strategies (Furnari et al, 2015; Julian & Gasser, 2019).…”

Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping as a Transformative Justice Concept: Civilian Protection and Everyday Justice in the Bangsamoro

“…Notwithstanding these constraints, international interveners have adapted to support local peace efforts within conflict-affected communities (Furnari et al 2015). International NGOs such as Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), Peace Brigades International, and Meta Peace Team have operated in conflict situations using similar strategies and roles performed by specially trained civilians, adopting a nonviolent form of intervention, and coordinating closely with local civil society actors.…”

“…The idea behind UCP's nonviolent approach was shaped by at least five sources: Gandhi's concept of Shanti Sena; European attempts to interposition "peace armies" in conflicts; proposals for the UN and the EU to establish an unarmed peacekeeping force; volunteer services developed since the First World War (such as Service Civil International and services of the Christian Church); and military peacekeeping (Julian and Schweitzer 2015, 2). Case studies of UCP projects in South Sudan (Easthom 2015;Furnari et al 2015), Bougainville (Gehrmann et al 2015), Sri Lanka (Schweitzer 2009), the Balkans (ibid. ), and Mindanao (Rood 2005;Engelbrecht and Kaushik 2015;Schweitzer 2009) have appreciated the potential contributions of this strategy in peace efforts.…”