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What's New
ANNOUNCING RELEASE OF:
DESCRIPTION:
Drawing on extensive international experience in the field, ICNC’s Hardy Merriman and Nicola Barrach-Yousefi have developed a unique and comprehensive glossary to support translation of civil resistance resources from English into other languages. Nearly six years in the making, it is now published and available to all, featuring:• Over 150 key terms defined.
• Term usage in a sentence.
• Extensive commentary and Introduction.
• Links to translations of civil resistance terminology in 31 languages.Both translators and non-translators will find value in this reference, as a great deal can be learned from the concepts that underlie each term.
You can also read Hardy Merriman’s blog post on the launch of the Glossary.
As with all ICNC publications, Glossary of Civil Resistance is available for free download, and hard copies are also available for purchase.
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NEW ICNC MONOGRAPH ON EXTERNAL SUPPORT FOR NONVIOLENT CAMPAIGNS; FREE WEBINAR WITH RENOWNED RESEARCHERS ON MARCH 3
ICNC is proud to present the newest addition to its popular Monograph Series, The Role of External Support in Nonviolent Campaigns: Poisoned Chalice or Holy Grail? by Drs. Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, authors of the groundbreaking civil resistance classic, Why Civil Resistance Works.
Published by ICNC Press, this new report employs original, qualitative, and quantitative data to examine the ways that external assistance impacted the characteristics and success rates of post-2000 revolutionary nonviolent uprisings.Homing in on eight nonviolent campaigns, Chenoweth and Stephan analyze the effects that training, funding, and other support from outside governmental and non-governmental actors had on the efforts to resist powerholders’ abuse, corruption and injustice.
Download the full monograph for free here.
The authors will present a free webinar about their findings on March 3.
Read more and sign up for the free webinar here.
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ICNC, ASIL Team Up For Groundbreaking Series
In a groundbreaking collaboration, ICNC and the American Society of International Law (ASIL) recently hosted a series of events focusing on the intersection of civil resistance and international law. Topics included how civil resistance movements can receive international support, as well as how popular nonviolent movements contribute to the development of international law.
The events featured expert panelists, including scholars, movement leaders, and members of the policy community.
o Wednesday, January 13, 2021: Nonviolent Movements for Democracy and Human Rights: The Call from the Front Lines—What’s Our Response?
o Wednesday, January 27, 2021: Nonviolent Civil Resistance: Implications for International Law & Law-making.
o Wednesday, February 3, 2021: External Support to Democracy and Human Rights Movements: Proposing a Doctrine of a Right to Assist.
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ICNC Interview
Brahim Bilal Ramdhane (Mauritania)
Brahim Bilal Ramdhane was born into slavery in Mauritania and spent 20 years in forced labor. Today, he is the Vice President of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), an organization that works to eradicate slavery in Mauritania.
In 2014, IRA launched a Freedom Caravan, traveling throughout Mauritania to raise awareness about new laws, encouraging debates and breaking the silence about slavery.
Watch more Interviews
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For Activists & Organizers
ICNC provides practical, relevant information and educational opportunities about civil resistance to activists and organizers around the world.
Our view is that nonviolent struggle is a social science that can be studied and understood. Practitioners can increase their chances of success by learning lessons from each other as well as from cutting edge academic scholarship on this topic.
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New from ICNC Press
The Path of Most Resistance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Nonviolent Campaigns by Ivan Marovic, is a practical guide for activists and organizers of all levels, who wish to grow their resistance activities into a more strategic, fixed-term campaign. It guides readers through the campaign planning process, breaking it down into several steps and providing tools and exercises for each step. Upon finishing the book, readers will have what they need to guide their peers through the process of planning a campaign. This process, as laid out in the guide, is estimated to take about 12 hours from start to finish.It is available for purchase or free download in English, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese (Brazilian).
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Visit our full resource library to find hundreds of resources on civil resistance in English and over 70 languages.
Or, if you are interested in civil resistance and don’t know where to start, we’ve made a list of general introductory resources–many of them short articles–to introduce you to the field. See our list of ten key resources for activists and organizers.
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ICNC Translations Program
Translating civil resistance literature into diverse languages is one of the most powerful ways to spread knowledge and increase the effectiveness of nonviolent movements struggling for rights, freedom, and justice. Learn more about our translations program.
We also currently host resources on civil resistance in over 70 languages and dialects on our website.
Find Translated Resources
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For Scholars & Students
The discipline of civil resistance has developed enormously in recent years, driven by new quantitative and qualitative scholarly research, as well as by numerous nonviolent movements around the world.
ICNC runs a number of grant-supported academic and educational programs to meet the growing demand for cutting edge research, applied knowledge and practical skills in this field. Look at our research, writing, teaching and other educational offerings and review current calls for proposals or applications.
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Academic Online Curriculum
ICNC’s Academic Online Curriculum on Civil Resistance (AOC) is an online resource to advance curriculum development, teaching, and research on civil resistance. It offers an extensive and regularly updated set of resources in this field, organized into clearly structured topics and case studies, and drawn in part from content that we and various academic collaborators developed for the ICNC university seminars we’ve led since 2009.Anyone can register to use the AOC at any time and it is free to use.
Topics on the AOC include:
– Civil Resistance: Nature, Ideas and History
– Strategic Considerations in Civil Resistance Struggles
– Types of Civil Resistance StrugglesAnd more!
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Calls from ICNC Academic Initiatives
Throughout the year, ICNC is offering a number of academic opportunities, resources, and support that it makes available to scholars and students. The field of civil resistance has grown immensely and these academic programs aim to respond to the growing demand for knowledge and skills and contribute to expanding the quality of education, research, and curriculum related to civil resistance. This page includes the current and past calls for the ICNC’s educational and research programs, such as learning opportunities, curriculum support, and research grants.One of our calls, the Rapid Field Research and Data Collection Program, accepts applications on a rolling basis and interested applicants can apply for the program throughout the year.
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New from ICNC Press:
Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) to a Right to Assist (RtoA) Campaigns of Civil Resistance
by Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman
Available in: English, Arabic, and SpanishEvents of the last decade demand new approaches to atrocity prevention that are adaptable, innovative and independent of a state-centered doctrine. With the aim of reducing risk factors such as civil war, we argue for a new normative framework called The Right to Assist (RtoA)….
See ICNC Press Publications
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For the Policy Community
Civil resistance movements have a proven role in advancing human rights, democratic governance, and curtailing corruption. They are a critical factor in addressing root causes of human suffering and reducing deadly violence in the world.
It is incumbent for members of the policy community who care about these issues to understand how movements work; their historic record of making change; and when, how, and under what circumstances external actors can take actions that are helpful to movements.
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New From ICNC Press:
Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsbility to Protect (RtoP) to a Right to Assist (RtoA) Campaigns of Civil Resistance
by Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman
Available in: English, Arabic, and SpanishEvents of the last decade demand new approaches to atrocity prevention that are adaptable, innovative and independent of a state-centered doctrine. With the aim of reducing risk factors such as civil war, we argue for a new normative framework called The Right to Assist (RtoA)….
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Powering to Peace: Integrated Civil Resistance and Peacebuilding Strategies
by Veronique Dudouet
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This report explores the complementary ideas and practices that civil resistance and peacebuilding approaches present, each from different points along the conflict transformation spectrum. Both strategies oppose violence in all its forms, and seek to pursue just peace by peaceful means. However, they take different approaches to conflict transformation, in particular how they analyze primary causes of violence and how they respond to conflict. Drawing on a number of case studies, this report aims to help practitioners and scholars understand how integrating these strategies can help establish a path for “powering to peace.” -
A Movement-centered Support Model: Consideration for Human Rights Funders and Organizations
ICNC President Hardy Merriman writes: “What makes civil resistance movements effective? If funders and human rights organizations can identify key factors that answer this question, then their efforts can be oriented towards trying to support the development and growth of those factors. […]”
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Minds of the Movement Blog
Minds of the Movement is a blog for those interested in the ideas and experiences of people on the front line of civil resistance, and those who seek to understand the art and science of nonviolent struggle.
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NEW COUNTDOWN SERIES
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Maciej Bartkowski writes: “In the past two decades, autocracies have been on the rise and aspiring autocrats in democracies have been gaining in numbers and strength. The 2020 democracy report by the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute noted that by 2020, autocracies have formed a clear majority for the first time since the beginning of 2000, constituting 92 countries with 54% of the global population or 4.2 billion people. Furthermore, 35% of the world’s population, an additional 2.7 billion people, live today in countries that are experiencing a significant decline in their democracy index and that are often headed by elected anti-democratic demagogues. This is colloquially known as the third wave of authoritarianism, or “autocratization” […]” -
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Rev. Tremaine Combs writes: “With the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, 2020 has seen a swell in support, prioritization, and even vitriol regarding the movement to cement in the public consciousness that Black Lives Matter. Although it has undergone numerous iterations since the first enslaved Africans were brought to the United States in the early 1600s, the modern movement for Black lives as it exists in 2020 has its roots in the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin in Florida. It then picked up steam with the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri after the death of Michael Brown in 2014. Some distinguishable trends, as well as challenges, set the movement apart from its antecedents. […]” -
Phil Wilmot writes: “Abdourahman embarked on self-study of the strategy of nonviolent action in a repressive climate. He had just served four years in prison for participating in an opposition coalition meeting for which he was serving as secretary general at the time. Simply by typing “how to bring down a dictatorship without violence” into a search engine, he discovered some key texts on nonviolent resistance that had been translated into French and made available free of charge on the websites of CANVAS, ICNC, and other educational organizations. […]”
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