Nonviolent Knowledge(s) and Unarmed Civilian Protection

Abstract

Abstract In its claim to take the human, and in particular the civilian, as the referent object of security, human security seeks to build not only physical but ontological security for those who live and work in conflict-affected communities; those who shape conflict and are shaped by it. Unarmed civilian protection (ucp), a method of civilian-to-civilian and civilian self-protection, is led by the civilians who make up conflict-affected communities. Rather than ‘including’ local actors in their protection or seeking to extract information about conflict from them, ucp is a practice in which local and international actors work together to co-create and build spaces of protection. This protection is based on conflict knowledge which enables nonviolent protection methods to be practiced effectively. This knowledge comes not from armed actors nor state delegates, but rather from and with conflict-affected communities. Embracing civilian experiential knowledge of armed and violent conflict, ucp instrumentalises civilians, their knowledge(s) of and relationships to armed conflict in the creation of protection networks. Taking ucp as a case study of nonviolent protection, and ucp practitioners as conflict knowledge producers, this article argues that civilian experiential knowledge of armed conflict is essential to the pursuit of civilian protection. Rather than being a prescriptive set of aims, the human security agenda must take seriously the experiences of civilians affected by conflict, centring their experiential knowledge(s) and agency in order to move beyond the unintentional yet harmful (re)production of binary security logics.