-
What's New
ICNC, ASIL Team Up For Groundbreaking Series
In a groundbreaking collaboration, ICNC and the American Society of International Law (ASIL) are offering a series of events focusing on the intersection of civil resistance and international law. Topics include how civil resistance movements can receive international support, as well as how popular nonviolent movements contribute to the development of international law.
The events feature 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.
All events are free and open to the public.
-
Apply now to ICNC’s 2021 Participant-Led Online Course on Civil Resistance
This participant-led course is designed by ICNC as a cohort-based course where the accepted participants work together as a collaborative learning community with some technical assistance from ICNC, but without instructors’ moderation or comments on participant discussions. Participants in this course will work together with other participants effectively, and help each other build a strong and motivated learning community.
We encourage any movement activists, organizers, scholars, educators, members of civil society, policy professionals, and journalists to apply to take this course—if you think the course will help you participate in, support, or analyze nonviolent peoples’ movements for human rights, political freedom, social justice, and environmental sustainability more effectively.
Course dates: March 4, 2021 – April 22, 2021
Application Deadline: Sunday, February 7, 2021, by midnight EST
Learn More! -
New civil resistance guide
‘Minds of the Movement’ co-editor Maciej Bartkowski writes:
It took more than a month of nonviolent pro-democracy protests by Belarusians—met consistently with vicious repression by the Lukashenko government—before some democratic countries selectively imposed sanctions on key perpetrators of the regime. Two months after the emergence of the national movement amid rigged elections and regime violence, the European Union, as a block, imposed sanctions on the top members of the Belarusian regime, adding to its sanction list its ruler Alexander Lukashenko a few days later.
In addition to sanctions on individuals (at a time of this writing entities enabling the regime were not yet sanctioned), a number of democracies also rejected the “official” election results (Lithuania went so far as to recognize opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, as the legitimate president), provided shelter to forcefully exiled Belarusian oppositionists—including Tikhanovskaya—and showed international solidarity by having diplomats visit the home of Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, who subsequently fled Belarus. […]
Read more! -
New blog post
This blog is the fifth in a series addressing the Top 10 civil resistance stories of 2020.
Minds of the Movement contributor Svetlana Kabanova writes:
By remaining nonviolent in defiance of a progressively brutal, 26-year-running dictatorship, Belarusians are embracing life over death but also doing so with a shrewd strategy in mind.
The official results of the presidential election in Belarus last August indicated that more than 80 percent of votes were for the incumbent president Alexander Lukashenko, landing him his sixth consecutive term. But the majority of the population didn’t trust these numbers, believing that only very few people voted for Lukashenko. In response, many thousands of protesters immediately took to the streets to protest election rigging, corruption, and disregard for democratic institutions. They were met by extreme repression not seen in the country since Soviet times—at first seemingly random but eventually targeted and insidious. As of November 15, at least 25,000 have been arrested in relation to the pro-democracy movement, and hundreds more since. […]
Read more!
-
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.
Learn More -
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).
Learn More -
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.
Visit the Resource Library -
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
-
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.
Learn More -
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!
Register now! -
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.
Learn More -
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
-
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.
Learn More -
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)….
Read More -
Powering to Peace: Integrated Civil Resistance and Peacebuilding Strategies
by Veronique Dudouet
Learn More
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. […]”
Learn More
-
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.
Learn More -
NEW COUNTDOWN SERIES
Read now!
Omar Lopez writes: “The pandemic this year hasn’t stopped people in Latin America from gathering and pushing for their rights, justice, and democracy agendas. In some cases, government mismanagement or inaction even provoked mass demonstrations, as was the case in Brazil. Yet this is not the only civil resistance trend one may identify in the region this year. Although violence remains an instrument of choice for many non-state groups, by and large, the stereotype of the armed guerrilla fighter as the symbol of a freedom fighter, which has plagued the collective conscience of Latin America for centuries, […]” -
Read now!
Maciej Bartkowksi writes: “It took more than a month of nonviolent pro-democracy protests by Belarusians—met consistently with vicious repression by the Lukashenko government—before some democratic countries selectively imposed sanctions on key perpetrators of the regime. Two months after the emergence of the national movement aimed rigged elections and regime violence, […]” -
Abdourahman Mohamed Guelleh and Amber French write: “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. […]”
Read now!