Nonviolence Training

Speech by Isabelle Geuskens, Program Manager IFOR-WPP

Thank you for inviting me to speak here this morning!

My remarks here today
are from the perspective of peace movement that holds active
nonviolence as its core value since 1919, the International
Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR).  They are largely based on
the experiences of one of its programs, the Women Peacemakers
Program.

The War Resisters’ International’s Nonviolence Programme

The Nonviolence Programme is one of the two main programmes areas for the WRI office and network. Working to promote and support nonviolence for social change within the WRI and the wider grassroots movement. The programme began working 2 years ago and has already made some accomplishments.

Militarism is inextricably linked in with the wider patriarchal capitalist system we live in. This analysis however allows us to build links for setting ourselves short-term goals. And while doing that it is necessary for us to keep in view and understand the place of those short-term goals within the larger picture.

This suggests a shift to include acting towards more realistic, small-scale aims and a new variation on the theme: "Think total, act local"

Some reoccurring themes during the seminar were:

a) Linking with people

Engaging and fostering links with people is one of the most important aspects of nonviolent action. We are frequently perceived as engaging solely in confrontational actions with either negative or utopian demands. In speaking up against the status quo, we threaten the vested interests of the media, and as a result usually receive a bad press. We must therefore try our hardest to link directly with all the people around us, as well as with those who are already working in similar areas.

With protests at Seattle, Prague and Genoa, a diverse movement campaigning for global justice had received more and more media coverage. A lot of this has been negative, concentrating on violent riots at these summits rather than the issues. The words "globalisation" and "anti-globalisation" tend to be bandied about, with lots of confusion about their actual meaning. We cannot win an argument if we do not even understand the terms we are using.

Militarism has been the traditional target for the peace movement's nonviolent action. But keeping in mind the issues discussed in WRI's 1999 Seminar, "The Changing Face of the Military", we must remain vigilant of changes. The dictionary definition of militarism includes references to:

The Decline In Peace Activism In Post-Repressive Situations -- Croatia

Some say that there is no need for nonviolent activism in post-conflict situations, as the primary target is gone. Sadly however, the end of a conflict does not necessarily bring an end to all other problems.

Militarism, injustice and ethnic tensions can persist long after the guns have been laid to rest. Nonviolent action is necessary precisely to stop a renewed conflict breaking out again. But how do we respond to the drop in peace activism in post-repressive situations ?

Taking part in activity against violence is particularly difficult when it is in the face of heavy, often arbitrary and unregulated, violence, as is the case during military action.

Several speakers were unhappy with the use of the term "non-war" in the title of this session. While situations in Israel, Yugoslavia (pre-'99) and Northern Ireland were neither full-scale war nor peace, speakers felt that the term "non-war" obscured the long-term, low-intensity nature of these conflicts

The initiative for a South/South gathering of nonviolence trainers came out of a 1991 International Trainers meeting held in Handel (Netherlands) under the joint auspices of WRI, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.

Index of individual chapters

Published in 1991 by War Resisters' International and the Myrtle Solomon Memorial Fund Subcommittee (of the Lansbury House Trust Fund; Charity Reg No 306139) c/o War Resisters' International, 55 Dawes Street, London SE17 1EL, Britain.

A grant towards the production of this book was received from the Puckham Trust

ISBN 0 903517 14 0

Edited by Shelley Anderson and Janet Larmore

Production by Howard Clark and Ken Simons

All copyrights are

Life can be better than this. The most fortunate of us have been crippled and scarred; we are less than we could be. All of us have lived in societies where individuals, groups, classes exert arbitrary power over others. This is the essence of oppression. Women and men who should be able to think and decide and act for themselves are forced to be the obedient instruments of the will of others.

Nor is it the conditions of the present time alone that cripple us. 'The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living' wrote Marx. The history and culture of every society shapes the consciousness of those born and brought up within it, and no culture is without repressions, taboos, and myths which limit the growth of individuals and of society as a whole. Without a profound cultural revolution there is no revolution at all.