Civilians Creating Safe Space: The Role of Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping in Protection of Civilians

Abstract

ABSTRACT The demand for protection for civilians threatened by direct violence is huge, and most responses draw on ‘Protection of Civilians’ (PoC) by military peacekeepers. In Myanmar and the Philippines, civilians use nonviolence to protect people in their communities from direct violence showing that PoC is carried out by local actors and in sites outside military peacekeeping missions. Evidence from those communities, and the use of Unarmed Civilian Protection, challenges the assumption that only the military can do PoC, and provides the basis for broadening the scope of PoC to better protect civilians from direct violence.