In Europe’s not-so-distant history, as well as presently in Ukraine, ordinary people achieve the extraordinary when their freedom, human dignity, and security are threatened–even without weapons. This blog series shows that there exists a “narrow, dangerous, uncertain but very real path towards a better world”, in the words of French graphic novelist Xavier Dorison. That path is unarmed resistance, widespread in Ukraine since 2022, yet poorly documented and little-understood.

L’invasion russe de l’Ukraine. La montée de la guerre hybride à la russe. La réceptivité générale à l’idée de résistance non-violente en Lettonie, l’un des deux États baltes qui partagent une frontière avec la Russie, n’a jamais été aussi faible. Ce sont les Forces d’opérations spéciales américaines (US-SOF) et l’OTAN qui ont réussi à attirer à nouveau l’attention de l’État letton sur la défense civile non-violente (DCNV), présentée comme partie intégrante de la défense nationale. La question de la mise en œuvre de ce concept reste encore aujourd’hui assez délicate en Lettonie, à l’exception d’un nombre croissant d’initiatives portant une autre étiquette : « défense globale », dont un projet d’éducation à la défense très convaincant.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine. The rise of Russian-style hybrid warfare. General receptivity to the idea of nonviolent civilian-based defense (CBD) in Latvia, one of the two Baltic states that share a border with Russia, has never been lower. It was the US Special Operations Forces (US-SOF) and NATO that succeeded in drawing the Latvian state’s attention back to CBD, presented as an integral part of national defense. The question of how to implement this concept, known as “comprehensive defense”, remains rather delicate in Latvia to this day—with the exception of a very convincing defense education project. […]

In a post last fall, I argue that current NGO storytelling practices are rooted in a Western international development frame. Whether this is harmful or not in theory or based on some ideal/ideology is not the subject of this follow-up post. In any case, our work as movement supporters doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens in the real world. What I do know, however, is that many movement supporters lack the civil resistance frame in their work […]

NGO ‘storytelling’ typically focuses on the more personal aspects of activism, often from a Western frame of international development. This approach is of course valuable in many ways. Engaging in activism is a very intense personal experience, one that often includes dedication, strength, resilience, pain and loss. Storytelling helps humanize people—activists—who oppressors do everything in their power to dehumanize. Telling their own ‘stories’ to an international readership helps activists build bridges to reinforce conscientious external support. And in my experience, many human rights defenders want to tell their stories. Yet the predominant storytelling practices only harness part of what activist writing and activist-writers are capable of. […]

“La non-violence est naïve. Les humains sont violents par nature.” “La violence est nécessaire pour affronter des adversaires violents. “La résistance non violente sape les moyens institutionnels de changement.” De telles opinions sont compréhensibles à la lumière de la socialisation de la société et de l’augmentation continue de la violence dans les médias d’information, d’éducation et de divertissement. Il peut être frustrant de devoir répondre régulièrement à de tels points de vue. Mais si l’autre personne est de bonne foi, répondre peut aussi être l’occasion d’approfondir la conversation, d’apprendre à connaître son point de vue et de partager le nôtre. […]

The working group of the Institute for Peace (IPP), “Civil resistance, nonviolence and the culture of peace”, focuses on three concepts or approaches that intersect both in their theoretical dimensions and in their practical expressions. The aim of the group is to develop its research axes and to pursue targeted activities for the academic, activist, media, associative and political communities, with an emphasis on educational materials. We aspire to bring together diverse Francophone communities of thought and practice, to broaden the horizons of a still very young field of study, and to promote the work that has been produced on our subjects in French over the past several decades. […]

Tibetans, like other liberation struggles with a diaspora component, have one foot in and one foot out. Some movement actors—the diaspora and the government-in-exile—can exert pressure on the occupier from the outside. “That’s our domain, so there is pressure coming from all sides. We [MPs] are all united that we should find ways to restore freedom”, Jigdal explains to my students. On the other hand, the occupied population can exercise pressure on the occupier from the inside—if empowered to do so. […]

Mohsen Sazegara has been a social media influencer since before it became a thing. Having started his YouTube channel in June 2009 to share knowledge and resources on nonviolent action in Farsi, he pre-dates nearly every pioneer of the influencer phenomenon. But Mohsen’s influence has nothing to do with the fashion or fitness industries. The only “brand” he represents is nonviolent revolution for rights, freedom and democracy. […]

“‘Writing ourselves into humanhood.’ ‘To build towards a more meaningful future.’ ‘A labor of love for our struggle.’ ‘Catharsis…’

“What is your relationship to writing and how is that related to your activism? We received the above responses when we discussed this question with activists we met this past February at the Global People Power Forum, a space for movements and movement-minded organizations to share, learn and advance our collective wisdom. As ICNC and ActionAid Denmark embark on a new collaboration this year, we are going straight to the source. […]”

“Nonviolence is naïve. Humans are violent by nature.” “Violence is needed to confront violent adversaries.” “Nonviolent resistance undermines institutional means of change.” Views such as these are understandable in light of society’s socialization and ongoing elevation of violence in news, education and entertainment media. It can be frustrating to have to respond to such views on a regular basis. But if the other person is engaging in good faith, responding can also be an opportunity to deepen the conversation, learn about their perspective, and share our own. In this article, I dig deeper into some widespread assumptions about nonviolent resistance, in the spirit of reinforcing the capacity of advocates of the effectiveness of civil resistance to steer conversations toward higher ground. […]

“This is why we must break the silence on self-immolation in the field of nonviolent resistance. Whether one believes self-immolation to be an act of violence or of nonviolent resistance, oppressive regimes are eager to fill the silence and portray self-immolation as an outcome of mental illness or religious extremism. Dictatorships always seek to throw a veil of doubt over acts of resistance that challenge their power. […] Without recommending this harrowing tactic to anyone, we can still honor the sacrifice of self-immolators for rights, justice and freedom. For whether it is to die in the truth or to live in the truth, it is still the truth that is always worth pursuing…”

J’ai rencontré Olga Sagaidak en mai dernier au Centre culturel ukrainien de Paris, en France. Dans le grand salon où j’ai mené notre entretien, les murs étaient tapissés du sol au plafond de photographies stupéfiantes de destructions de guerre et d’œuvres d’art de rue protestant contre l’invasion de l’Ukraine par Poutine. Mon estomac s’est noué lorsque, me penchant vers l’avant pour voir de plus près un dessin anti-guerre, j’ai réalisé qu’il avait en fait été dessiné par la main d’un enfant ukrainien. […]

It’s a story of fearless resistance to dictatorship. It’s a decolonized story—one told about Ugandans, by Ugandans, not by a former colonial power. The story aspires to give back the power to Africans, and to African women and queers, in particular. It’s the story of Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan queer woman of numerous facets, but most of all, of power through provocation. Stella, currently in her late forties, is a poetess, academic, African feminist, LGBTQIA+ activist, opposition politician, and fierce challenger of the Museveni regime. She was imprisoned in April 2017 for several weeks for posting on Facebook a poem boldly criticizing the First Lady and President Yoweri Museveni. […]

У моїй першій публікації я поділилась надихаючими розповідями про немілітарний цивільний захист музеїв в охопленій війною Україні. Я також аналізувала міжнародний заклик українських митців бойкотувати російські об’єкти культури та наближених до Путіна митців. У цьому дописі я детально розповім про те, що в інших публікаціях називала «документальним спротивом», спираючись на нещодавнє інтерв’ю з українською культурною діячкою Ольгою Сагайдак. […]

Я познайомилась з Ольгою Сагайдак в травні поточного року в Українському культурному центрі в Парижі. У великій вітальні, де я проводила наше інтерв’ю, стіни від підлоги до стелі були вкриті приголомшливими фотографіями воєнних руйнувань та вуличним мистецтвом на знак протесту проти вторгнення путіна в Україну 2022 року. У мене всередині защемило, коли, нахилившись, щоб ближче розглянути один антивоєнний малюнок, я зрозуміла, що його намалювала рука української дитини. […]

Facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, I find it truly courageous that the Ukrainian art world is taking bold actions to preserve their country’s immense cultural heritage, both in-country and from afar. After all, as Olga aptly puts it, “This war is a war of cultures”. Putin’s only language is violence; Ukrainians have been fluent in the language of nonviolent resistance for decades. By putting culture in a key position of the anti-occupation struggle, Ukrainians can and are nudging the conflict to where they can have a battlefield advantage.. […]

I met Olga Sagaidak last May at the Ukrainian Cultural Center here in Paris, France. In the large drawing room where I conducted our interview, the walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with jaw-dropping photography of war destruction and street art protesting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. My stomach knotted when, leaning forward for a closer glimpse of one anti-war drawing, I realized it had in fact been sketched by the hand of a Ukrainian child. […]

အယ်ဒီတာ၏မှတ်ချက်။ ။ အောက်တွင်ဖော်ပြထားသောအကြောင်းအရာများသည် ၂၀၂၁ခုနှစ် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလတွင်အာဏာသိမ်းမှုပေါ်ပေါက်ခဲ့ပြီးနောက် ဆန့်ကျင်သည့်ဆန္ဒပြပွဲများကို ရက်စက်စွာဖြိုခွင်းခဲ့ပြီးသည့်နောက် မြန်မာပြည်မှာထွက်ပြေးလွတ်မြောက်လာသော ဒီမိုကရေစီလိုလားသူ ဆန္ဒပြခေါင်းဆောင်သည် ICNCနှင့်အတူ မျှဝေထားသော ကိုယ်ရေးကိုယ်တာ ဇာတ်ကြောင်းတစ်ခုဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ထိုဆန္ဒပြခေါင်းဆောင်၏မှတ်တမ်းသည် တပ်မတော်၏ လက်၀ယ်တွင်ဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့သော ပြည်တွင်းစစ်နှင့် ရက်စက်ကြမ်းကြုတ်မှုများ ဖိနှိပ်မှုများကြောင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ဆယ်စုနှစ်များစွာကြာ ပေါ်ပေါက်ခဲ့သော ဒီမိုကရေစီရရှိရေးတိုက်ပွဲများ၏တပ်ဦးမှဆင်းသက်လာခဲ့ခြင်းဖြစ်ပါသည်။ […]

The following is a personal narrative shared with ICNC by a pro-democracy organizer who fled Myanmar following the brutal crackdown of anti-coup protests in February 2021. His account comes from the frontlines of the country’s decades-long struggle for democracy, which has been punctuated by civil war and brutal repression at the hands of the Tatmadaw. Our contact shares his personal experience with repression but also a message of resilience and solidarity that hopefully resonates with activists living under harsh dictatorships worldwide.

On this day last year, Poland’s high court declared unconstitutional a law that authorized abortions in the case of fetus malformations. The move sparked protests in cities and small towns across Poland, many of them sprinkled with creative, sarcastic and humorous signs, slogans and posters. Some Polish diaspora groups in major cities worldwide actively joined the protests. […]

The COVID-19 crisis fundamentally altered the conditions in which activists organized in 2020, yet we still observed widespread political mobilization in 2020 as a result of nonviolent movements. Perhaps then there is some silver lining in this crisis—we are reminded that repression and other unfavorable conditions (read: physical constraints) do not doom movements to failure. Activists and movements develop skills that enable them to overcome challenging social and economic conditions. […]

Abdourahman s’est lancé dans l’auto-apprentissage de la stratégie de l’action non violente dans un contexte très répressif. Il sortait de quatre mois de prison pour avoir participé à une réunion de crise de la coalition d’opposition. Simplement en tapant le terme « comment vaincre une dictature sans violence » dans un moteur de recherche, il a découvert quelques livres clés sur la résistance non violente, traduits en français et mis à disposition gratuitement sur les sites de CANVAS, d’ICNC, et d’autres organisations engagées dans l’éducation sur ce sujet. […]

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. […]

We have learned from our international participants that carelessness with regard to terminology—conflating nonviolence (a set of beliefs) with nonviolent action (actual conflict)—is counterproductive at best and dangerous at worst. It plays into the hands of authoritarians, who thrive on confusion, to dismiss as elitist the aspiration to use precise terminology. We owe it to ourselves—and we owe it to nonviolent movements on the front lines of societal change—to talk about their actions in a way that does them justice. […]

In this article I offer a big-picture framework for how the Covid-19 crisis is impacting activism, organizing, and civil resistance movements. I hope this article, which defines four main phases I’ve observed, is helpful as movements make sense of this moment, analyze where they want to go from here, and begin planning a transition to the post-Covid-19 period. […]

On October 2, 2019—150 years to the day after the birth of Mohandas Gandhi—50 people from the Gandhian organization Ekta Parishad departed from the Raj Ghat memorial, dedicated to Gandhi, in Delhi. It was Day One of what will be a year-long journey on the Global March for Justice and Peace. With a jaw-dropping itinerary of 11,000 kilometers winding through 10 countries on the way to Geneva, 50 core marchers are receiving support from, and being joined by, self-organized local groups along the way. […]

Today, December 26, is a day of remembrance in Iran, observed by a moment of silence for the approximately 1,500 estimated to have been killed in the government crackdown on protesters since late November. During this moment, people will stop wherever they are—in the street, on the sidewalk, at restaurants. Their standstill is a low-risk, hard-to-repress nonviolent method designed to send a clear signal of dissent and disapproval to the Rouhani government. […]

We can engage through small acts of support, by improving our knowledge about movements, and by applying that knowledge in our daily activities and conversations. If profiles as diverse as an anthropologist in Puerto Rico, a director of a good governance NGO in Zimbabwe, a citizen journalist in Singapore, a National Minister of Culture in Armenia, a professor of peace psychology, and a front-line activist against modern-day slavery in Mauritania can do this, then ordinary, conscientious world citizens like us can too. […]

The Harry Potter bug never bit me. Glancing at the back cover of Rivera Sun’s The Way Between (Rising Sun Press Works, 2016) last month, my first thought was “I’m not sure this is my genre.” But I had noticed the novel making its way around my professional circles for some time, so I was curious to see for myself what the buzz was about. […]

For over a decade, ICNC grantee Ahouty Kouakou and his colleagues from two civil society groups have been engaged in a nonviolent struggle for disability rights in Côte d’Ivoire, a small Francophone country in West Africa. Parting with the bleak Parisian winter last December, I thawed out during a three-day site visit to the country’s economic capital, Abidjan […]

In the one year—to the day—that the Minds of the Movement blog has been in operation, much has changed in the world. Although newspapers and schoolbooks will likely remember the wars and violence that sketched the contours of history during this blink of an eye, our blog readers know there are other processes of change that have promise to deliver greater rights and justice in our world. […]

The Gnassingbé regime, a family dynasty that has been in power since the late 1960s, is doing everything it can to steer the struggle toward violence—which is precisely why it’s so important for activists on the ground to remain nonviolent. To resist violence itself. This is apparently no easy task. […]

From humble beginnings three decades ago, Ekta Parishad (“unity forum” in Hindi), a pluralistic movement for defending rights of marginalized communities in India, has grown to become today one of the world’s most massive—and exemplary—nonviolent movements. Last fall, I met Ramesh Sharma, National Coordinator of Ekta Parishad, and came to realize the richness, depth, and intelligence of this movement. […]

When I sat down with Mohsen Sazegara, exiled dissident, journalist and writer from Iran, to talk about civil resistance in his origin country, I got an unexpected lesson in physics. A former student of mechanical engineering, Sazegara found a way to apply the conservation of energy principle to the longstanding democracy […]

What sparked your interest in civil resistance? What does it mean for you in your life, and for the lives of others? And why does it matter for understanding the state of the world today? It would be impossible to answer these questions in one, or even a few blog posts. But as Minds of the Movement Co-Editor, my goal for this blog is to […]