Spirit in Action
Mighty Nonviolent Peaceforce - Mel Duncan
Mel Duncan is a founder and force behind Nonviolent Peaceforce, an important evolution in the work of unarmed, well-trained, civilian peacekeepers. With active programs in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Sudan and engaging soon in South Caucasus, Nonviolent Peaceforce has drawn widespread recognition and support, including funding from UNICEF, an upcoming training at the UN, and invitations from heads of state.
- Broadcast on:
- 01 Jul 2012
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ We've got a great guest today for Spirit in Action. Mel Duncan was one of the presenters at the April Conference sponsored by Friends for a Nonviolent World called Ways of Peace 2, Nonviolence in the Islamic Tradition. While Mel is not Muslim himself, the organization he helped found and works for Nonviolent Peace Force has many Muslim workers and is doing its work in some Muslim countries. Nonviolent Peace Force has dramatically refined and advanced the role of unarmed civilian peacekeepers in areas like Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Sudan. With growing respect from and engagement with the United Nations, UNICEF, and leaders of several countries, Nonviolent Peace Force promises immensely hopeful possibilities for the world's future. As I said, Mel Duncan spoke at the April Ways of Peace Conference and will start out this spirit in action with part of his presentation at that event. Here is Mel Duncan of Nonviolent Peace Force presenting in the Twin Cities as part of a panel discussion, Nonviolence in Action, Muslim Peace Making on the Ground. As I started to prepare my remarks for today, I quickly went back 13 years. To when I was confronted by a Sufi, and this is very interesting in light of the end of the last discussion, and this Sufi stared at me and said, "And your job is to enter the heart of your enemy." And from that point on, she challenged me right to my core about the dualistic way in which I worked and dealt with the world, and instead challenged me to organize from an understanding of our core unity. Now since that time in helping to organize Nonviolent Peace Force, I've engaged with armed Buddhist monks, with people who justify suicide bombers in the name of Hinduism, with elite evangelical Christians who justify brutal hideous acts, and with people who kidnapped my friend Umar Gileo and held him for 111 days, and during that time used Islam to justify their actions. And what I found in engaging with all of the people I just mentioned is a fundamental absolutism that I'm right and you're wrong, and I'm willing to go to extreme measures including killing you because I'm right and you're wrong. At the very same time, I have worked with people from all of the major faith traditions and those who profess no organized faith whatsoever, and engaging in creative and courageous peacekeeping and human rights defense. Nonviolent Peace Force, in the words of Afra this morning, seeks new ways to increase safety and spare spilling blood. Nonviolent Peace Force recruits and trains and sends teams of unarmed civilian peacekeepers to areas of violent conflict, and while there, our mandate is to protect civilians and to work with local civil society in deterring further outbreaks of violence. And I also recall that as we organized Nonviolent Peace Force, it was Muslim leaders who stepped forward very early. I remember in 2000 at the Millennial Summit when Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister then and now of Bangladesh, issued a proclamation to the other heads of states in the world to support the development of the Nonviolent Peace Force. She was the first head of state to endorse this concept of nonviolently entering into violent conflicts. I remember Anural Karim Chaturay, who as Under Secretary General at the United Nations, authored "The Resolution for a Decade of a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World." He is now at work very profoundly working for a resolution at the UN to have peace established as a right and to be part of the universal declarations of human rights. In most of the conflicts that we have been involved in since 2003, we have worked directly with people of the Muslim faith. That's been most prominent in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. And that's a political statement actually to say in the southern Philippines because the moral people of Mindanao never saw themselves as Filipino. That was a decision that was made by colonial cartographers. And since that time, thousands of lives have been lost. We started our work in Mindanao a little over three years ago when we were invited by three local groups. And shortly after that, violence erupted. I hope it wasn't a cause and effect. But it was actually because of a... they were close on a memorandum of understanding. The two parties being the government of the Philippines and the moral Islamic Liberation Front. And a provocational act by a couple of politicians through the island back into war for another year. And it was during that time when two combating forces were converging on a village and people were starting to pack up their bags and to flee to go to one of the internally displaced camps which really even to call it a camp over states what was there. And the leaders of the village called one of our teams and said we have these armed groups that are converging on our village. We expect a firefight. People are panicking and starting to go. So our team led by Asufi who heads up our project there. Asufi from Pakistan. Called the leader of one of the one group on cell phone and then the leader of the other group because in modern warfare you have each other on speed dial. And said you know there must be a mistake here. Your guys are converging on the village. People are starting to panic and are starting to flee. And we know you don't want this to happen. And so we're going to be staying in the village just to help assure that doesn't happen. And then made the same phone call to the other commander and the commanders backed off and people stayed home. Now I had already mentioned the kidnapping of Umar Jalil, one of our peacekeepers who was working in Mindanao. And we found during the period that he was held which was 111 days engaging with the group that was holding him. And at times this group would want to talk like for an hour and a half. Now that's just not about making a ransom demand. That was about being unrecognized about wanting to be heard. So more recently after Jalil was released, our country director Atif Hamid and I were invited to one of the jungle camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. And the MILF was instrumental in getting Jalil's release. So when we got there, I was surprised because I expected would meet with this commander and a couple of his lieutenants. And instead there were motorbikes and three wheelers everywhere. And we were ushered under a Ramada. And here were 300 combatants sitting on plastic chairs, not at one of them 30 years old. And we were brought up onto the stage and we're sitting there. And I remember thinking two things. Number one, I'm glad that the CIA does not know where I am at this moment. And secondly, I wish that my fellow countrymen could be here. Because this leader of this revolutionary group introduced us, said that non-violent peace force was there at the invitation of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. And therefore we were to be respected and our people were not to be harmed. And then he invited Atif to get up and to talk with these 300 combatants about Islam and non-violence. Religion is being used violently to drive us apart and also to bring us together. And as that Sufi reminded me 13 years ago, starting me on this journey, that the deepest contributions of Islam and the other major faiths are those that challenge us to discover our unity by whatever name we use, that challenge us to justice and service, and that open us to the unending mystery. Thank you. Mel Duncan's presentation at the Waste of Peace Conference was followed by a Q&A session. Here's one of the questions that Mel responded to. I'm concerned about recent Supreme Court decisions that have been made. And I believe that they actually indicate that the work that you are doing under their ruling of bringing, of meeting with people who have been engaged in violent conflict, even as you are encouraging them and maybe even teaching about non-violence, that under U.S. definitions that subjects you to imprisonment and fines. And so I'm wondering if you could say more about those recent rulings and if the non-violent peace forces had to change in any way what you've done, or if you are just moving forward. The specific case that Jack is referring to as holder versus humanitarian law that was handed down about a year ago, related to a humanitarian organization in the United States that was helping a Kurdish group to file complaints with the UN High Commission on Human Rights, and that was determined to be providing material aid to a terrorist group and therefore a felony. There are efforts being made on multiple levels in terms of changing that decision via legislation, but that probably will be a while. And so in terms of how it has specifically impacted our work, I can honestly say that it hasn't. We continue going about our work. It is helped with the fact that most of our peacekeepers are not citizens of the United States. They come from 20-some countries from around the world. However, there are similar provisions in the EU. And so this really is something that we need to work with people like Keith Ellison, who is working in Congress to bring about the change. But until then, we just need to do the work and then see live with the consequences. We've heard a little from Mel Duncan as he spoke at the FN-VW conference, Ways of Peace 2, Nonviolence in the Islamic Tradition. We'll get Mel on the phone in just a moment to talk about Nonviolent Peace Force. But first, I'll remind you that this is Spirit in Action, and I'm Mark Helpsmeet of Northern Spirit Radio on the web at northernspiritradio.org. Find links to Mel, Nonviolent Peace Force, all of our guests in the archives of the past six years there. Let's go to the phone now to speak to Mel Duncan about unarmed civilian peacekeepers in service to our world. Mel's in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Mel, it's great to have you here for Spirit in Action. And it's good to be with you, Mark, and to talk about how the Spirit is in Action. Thank you for being part of the Ways of Peace conference. Your contribution to the panel in the afternoon was extremely valuable to me, very inspiring. So, I just knew I had to have you on. The work of Nonviolent Peace Force is truly a wonderful spirit moving on this earth. I appreciated having an opportunity to participate in that conference and to talk specifically about my experience, working with people of the Muslim faith on active nonviolent peacekeeping in various parts of the world. In the talk, you kind of broadly sketch some things I'd like you to fill in. Number one, your interaction 13 years ago with a Sufi woman. Could you talk about what that was about and where you were at that time? I mean, eventually, nonviolent peace force was part of the effort that you were led to, but 13 years ago were you just wandering the wilderness or what? In 1997, I received a fellowship to spend about a year and a half studying the connections between grassroots organizing for peace, justice, and the environment. And how that has connected to spirituality. I've been an organizer all of my life, and this gave me an opportunity to step back and look at the way that I was organizing the way I worked, the way in fact I viewed the world. The first step on that sojourn was at a place called the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California. That was a university that was founded by the theologian Matthew Fox, and Matthew was centrally involved in the education there. I was taking a class on the mystics my first semester there. We had just started a session on Ruby, and that session was being taught by a Sufi. During that first session of that class, she challenged me very directly by saying, "Your job is to enter the heart of your enemy." Now, this is a person I did not know I had never said anything to, and here she is the first day of that class challenging me very directly. I wrote down in my notebook, entered the heart of my enemy, that would be a good place to rip it out. And then later down the page, I wrote, "Don't go back to sleep. This could change your life." And from that moment on, Mark, I was challenged to my very core about the way that I organized. Which had always been us versus them, right versus wrong, good versus evil, 50% plus one means we kick their ass. I used the same method of analysis as President George W. Bush. I just chose better enemies. When the student is ready, the teachers appear, so from the moment of that confrontation, from then on, I was challenged everywhere I turned, to start to organize from an understanding of our unity, as opposed to our dualism. So, I started taking part in a Buddhist Sangha for social activists in the San Francisco Bay Area. I started studying some Vietnamese monk that I'd never heard of, some guy named Kignan Han, and a little over a year later, I found myself sitting in the Buddhist monastery in Southern France with Kignan Han. Again, he was very challenging about our understanding of unity, our connections, that we are not at a place in time where we can afford to take sides. The stakes are too big, and so it was upon leaving Plum Village in Southern France, which is Kignan Han's monastery. I was writing on a bus, and I wrote a thought piece about a nonviolent peace force. Near the end of 1998, I came back to Minnesota and started teaching at the university and doing some consulting and some writing, but this vision would not leave me. So, one night, my wife, Georgia, said to me, "Just go for it." So, the next day, I read in the periodical, the nation, about this upcoming conference at the Hague called the Hague Appeal for Peace, scheduled for May of 1999. As an organizer, I thought, "Well, that would be a good place to check out the currency of this idea. There's all kinds of good ideas all the time, but it's not always the time for each of them to take root." So, I raised enough money to get a plane ticket to go to the Hague, found a free place to stay there, and I was off. I got there, and instead of 5,000 people, as they had planned for, there were 9,000 people. Every venue was jammed. One showed up 45 minutes early for a presentation, or you watched it on remote video. So, after a day, I called Georgia back in Minnesota and said, "I can't organize here. I can stand up in the chair and start yelling, and I'll just fit into the background noise." And she replied, "Well, then be quiet and listen." So, the next day, I'm in the session, and in the form of a question, I hear a guy lay out the same vision of a large-scale, well-trained, non-violent peace force. I pushed through the crowd. I grabbed him by the arm, and I said, "If you're serious about what you just said, we have to go out the hall and start organizing. We only have a few days." The person I grabbed was David Hartso, who is a lifelong Quaker and activist. And while I was having this vision of a non-violent peace force in a Buddhist monastery, he was in a Serbian jail, having been arrested for doing non-violent training among Kosovar Albanian students. Having the same vision, by that night, we were pulling together small groups of people from around the world, talking about, is this the place in history to increase the scale, the scope, the international character, and the professionalism of unarmed civilian peacekeeping. And what we found, Mark, was far from being a vision that had originated with me in Plum Village or had originated in David in a Serbian jail. This idea of a well-trained standing unarmed civilian peacekeepers had been a recurrent vision and had occurred and recurred to enough of us that we were willing and able to put the possibility out there in the world. Wow, that's an amazing way to have it all kick off, just wonderful, just to fill in a couple of details. Before you got involved with, I think, Buddhism at the time of contact with Sufi, which you're taking this class and studying in the University of Creation's spirituality, the Sufi looks at you out of the blue, and evidently it's a woman, which I was kind of surprised at because in Muslim practice, women are separate from men at best, and they don't tend to have leadership positions over men. So I was a little bit surprised by that, but I guess given the context of where Matthew Fox led, I guess that's not surprising, but had you been involved religiously, spiritually before, evidently because you were in a combative mode before you weren't very pacifist-oriented, I guess. Oh, wait, wait, wait, pacifist does not imply that one is pacifist, and I certainly had looked upon myself as someone who was greatly moved by the nonviolent leaders of our times. Going back to the time I was in college and did a independent study comparing the nonviolence of Jesus to the nonviolence of Gandhi, so that had always greatly influenced me. But what was different was the challenge to organize from an understanding of our oneness, of our unity, and there are many, many of us who organize around peace and justice, who quickly lapse into an us versus them analysis. Right, right. I was assuming that you were on the peace and justice side of organizing, but I was guessing that while it was your goal, it wasn't necessarily the means that you were using to get to that end. And I think that what you've learned is that it needed to be your means as well as the end that you were heading toward. It's deeper than means. It goes to one's worldview, one's view of life, and that understanding of our unity. So again, what was your religious or spiritual foundation, the motivation, direction, outlook from childhood until this encounter with Sufi in 1997? Well, I was born and raised in a Methodist church where very early, I would say by junior high school, I was challenging myself about the message of Jesus and the social gospel and taking that very seriously. As I grew into adulthood, I learned about a variety of different approaches to God and accepted many of them as different roads to the divine. For the last 25 years or so, I have been an active member at Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, but I see myself as much more of a universalist. But I take part in this community because for me, it's very important to be able to practice and discuss and nurture my spirituality within a community context. And my church provides that for me. Now, that's great. I absolutely agree with you about that, that a community of faith or spirit can be really helpful in nurturing that focus and the growth. And evidently, you found a community that gives you that support without having to compromise your individual beliefs. Okay, so you and David Hartzel had this organizational meeting over in the Hague. How did it actually unfold, the creation of the non-violent Peace Force? One of the things you mentioned in the talk we listened to earlier is that more than half of your workers came from some 20 countries outside of the USA. How did that happen? After we met at the Hague, we developed an initial conversation draft about the idea of an unarmed civilian peacekeeping force. Then, for the next couple of years, spent time with people in some of the most violent places around the world, learning from them. And by this time, there was a small group of us that were working on that. So we spent time with people living and working in some of the most violent places on the planet, learning from them what they were doing that worked. And what is anything that they might need from a group of well-trained, unarmed civilians? And we learned a lot. First and foremost, no one can make anyone else's peace for them. That's the job of local actors, the primacy of local action. But outside well-trained peacekeepers can provide protection and help create the space for local peace builders and human rights defenders to be able to do their work and not be threatened, at least threatened, substantially, or killed. Secondly, as we were doing this field research, we found that there are creative and courageous peace builders and human rights defenders at work at this very moment in the most violent places in the world. If there's one message mark I could leave with your listeners, it's that when you wake up and things seem pretty bleak, remember those people that are out there on the front lines doing this courageous work. We also found that, cross-culturally, more often than not, this work was being led by women. And what those women told us time and time again is isolation kills us. If there is not a cost to our disappearance, we're much more likely to be found in the ditch. And so just by providing presence with us extends our lives and our ability to do our work. Simultaneous to that, we conducted academic research looking at the various applications of unarmed civilian peacekeeping over the last little more than half of a century. Gandhi was working on the Shanti Sena, which is Sanskrit for peace army, when he was assassinated. In the 1980s, there were a variety of applications through Witness for Peace through Peace Brigade's International, through the International Brigadistas. Moving into the 90s, there were the Balkan peace teams. So there was a variety of attempts, some of them very successful, some of them not so successful, at providing nonviolent intervention and civilian protection. So we did a feasibility study and looked at the conditions of where and when and how unarmed civilian peacekeeping works. And that really provided us the platform on which to build nonviolent peace force. The third element of our development that was key was, as I mentioned earlier, far from being an original vision with David or myself, this had been a recurrent vision. And so we would find when we talked to people, we would often get an air of recognition where people would say to us, we did that in our village in Gujarat. Or I wrote a paper on this at university, or I've been having recurrent dreams about this, or everything in my life has prepared me to do this work. Those are actual responses we got from people. So far from being an organizing project, this became a project of us recognizing one another. And people coming forward and saying, this is the time to put whatever money we have, our intellect, our creativity, and indeed our lives on the line to advance this entire concept of unarmed civilian peacekeeping where we can protect civilians and prevent violence in the midst of violent conflict without bringing in more guns. So how does that work? I mean, I realize that accompaniment, just the fact that there's an international presence, a witness there, that can have an effect. What is the work that you're doing? How do you help nurture along the peaceful aspirations? Well, there are really a variety of ways that it works. What causes someone who is killing civilians to be deterred by a group of well-trained non-violent peacekeepers? And this has been studied. One of the things that has been found is that most combatants, whether they be state actors or non-state actors, have a chain of command. And this chain of command includes at the top the political leadership and then the military leadership and then the field commanders and then the people at the field level who are often the ones that are perpetrating the abuses. And I want to point out that today the majority of the casualties of warfare are civilians, not combatants, and more often than not, this is done as a matter of strategy and is not done by accident. And so what we found is that all down that chain of command, there are vulnerability points, and it's our job to know what those vulnerability points are, and our job to know what the chain of command is, and we're on the ground. So we can see what the chain of command is. So at the political level, it might be what the various multi-state organizations, whether that be the UN or the EU or whatever, what their status is there, or what their status is with donor nations. On the military level, concern about the international criminal court in the Hague. On down the chain of command, there's concern about their superiors, there's concern about we're getting out into the community about what someone is doing right down to the perpetrator level. And you know, it's been documented that most of us have to be trained and conditioned to take another human life. It's not something that comes natural to our species. We as a species have inhibitions, and so our presence provides reinforcement to those inhibitions. Most of us don't like to do the kind of abuse that's being done by civilians in front of witnesses. So there is that first set of reasons as to knowing and addressing the vulnerability point. Secondly, this works because we only go into areas on a nonpartisan basis. We're not there to pick sides, and we only go at the invitation of well-rooted organizations that are committed to human rights and reconciliation. So when we are there, that tends to elevate their work. Thirdly, when there is a group of well-trained committed people in an area of conflict that are committed to non-violence, that tends to change the atmosphere. We saw this during the US Civil Rights Movement in places like Selma and Birmingham, and we see this around the world that when people are there committed to non-violence, we don't have guns back in the office, we don't have armored personnel, carriers waiting to ferry us out. That tends to change the atmosphere and reinforce the nonviolent tendencies in others as well. And finally, and much more subtly, presence that we provide becomes very mutual, and the people that were with provide that presence as well, and speaks to something that's much deeper and universal. Eckert Tolle talks about this in his book A New Earth, where he says, "In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever. That alert attention is present. It is the prerequisite of any authentic relationship. It's that proactive presence that we provide to people who are struggling in the midst of violent conflict that I think is probably the most important thing we do. And in turn, the people amidst the violent conflict provided for our peacekeepers as well." It's pretty clear to me that you're not simply starry-eyed idealists. I'm sure that there's some spiritual energy and idealism going into this. But you're not assuming you're safe there. You mentioned in the talk earlier about the kidnapping of your co-worker, and he did get released after a long period. In the case with the Christian peacemakers in Iraq, Tom Fox actually died doing, I guess, similar work to what you were doing. Are people going in knowing that not that it's probable they'll be killed, but that it's a definite possibility? How do they reconcile this? Most people, I think, when they're aware of a possible threat, their effort is to protect and to arm themselves in some ways. You're doing something that maybe is slightly counterintuitive by our society's values? I don't think it's counterintuitive. I think it is counter-dominant messaging. The messaging that we get, and especially our children receive, is that you have to arm. You have to become more violent to counteract violence. When, in fact, I think that there's a lot of intuition that tells us otherwise, and that in the face of violence that we can react in a non-violent way that can be very, very effective. During the recruitment process, during the training, our peacemakers are made well aware of the risk that is involved and decide to take that risk. Now, I want to emphasize that this is a situation of being gentle as a dove, but wise as a serpent, so we have very strict security protocol. Our security advisor is a veteran of the Irish military, and he's tough, and security is integrated into our training and is practiced throughout any deployment. And if people are not acting within the security protocol, they go home to their home country, because human life is too important, and conflicts do present great risks, especially violent conflicts. We are not doing this to make ourselves martyrs. We do this work because it is an effective way to protect civilians and to prevent violence. It's not unlike the impulse that people have to join volunteer fire departments, where people recognize that every year there's going to be a handful or more volunteer firefighters who are killed. But not the reason people join up. They join up to serve humanity. But there is a recognition of that risk. We take that recognition and accept it. You mentioned a number of times that your workers are well-trained. What kind of training prepares one to be part of the nonviolent peace force? We first have a mission preparedness training that we just completed one of those trainings at the beginning of May for 25 peacekeepers who are working in southern Sudan. During that mission preparedness training period, we focus on the primacy of local actors, non-violence, and non-partisanship. We also go very deeply into participatory actions where people learn how to communicate as a team, how to do conflict analysis, and how to determine the constellation of strategies to apply in a particular situation. After the completion of the mission preparedness training, then people are engaged in a country-specific training that is taught by our partner organizations, our local partners. And that goes much more into the context of the conflict, the politics, the economics, the religion, ethnicity, the colonial overlays, all of those kinds of things that are specific to that particular area where our peacekeeper will serve. Could a person who served in the military earlier, maybe was disenchanted with that, could they find a similar esprit de corps and maybe good use for some of the awarenesses they built? I'm aware that a number of military people learn to be good peacemakers. Have you ever had ex-military people come in and be part of nonviolent peace force, Mel? We certainly have. We have had military veterans who have served with nonviolent peace force that certainly would not disqualify someone. We recruit people from a variety of experiential backgrounds from many different countries and from all walks of life routinely, and this was something that surprised me a little bit more. Routinely, we'll have about 10 applicants for every position that we have available, and the minimum commitment is for two years, and this is hard work. On one recent training, we had applicants from 51 different countries, and we had enough money to train and deploy 23 people, 90 of the recruits cleared the first two levels of screening, and from that, we could only choose 23, and so it was quite a stellar group. In the group that just completed their training a couple of weeks ago for service in South Sudan, we have a woman who has been part of the police force in Zimbabwe. We have another woman who had worked with the reintegration of combatants in Colombia and a man who had worked doing civilian protection in Papua New Guinea. So we have amazing, talented people who are coming forth. We do not lack for people in this world to do this work. How are you funded in particular these volunteers, if that's what they are? Are they paid? They get living expenses? Who's upholding this work? First of all, our peacekeepers are paid. They are not volunteers. Their minimum commitment is for two years. During that time, they received their training, their transportation, their room, their board, their insurance, one home leave per year, and then a stipend that amounts to about $1,500 per month. Our code of conduct that they sign requires that they not spend that money on site. They live in communities at the level of those communities, and so their money either goes home to support their families or is banked for them and available once they complete their service. A lot of our support comes from individuals. This is an individual civil society grassroots effort of active protective solidarity. And so we depend on contributions from individuals. In addition to that, we get about 65% of our funding from various government groups. Recently, we received a grant for $1 million from UNICEF to provide protection for women and children in South Sudan. Other governments include Belgium, Norway, Germany, the European Union, and New Zealand. We also receive some funding from foundations and trust and from faith-based groups, primarily Quakers, Buddhists, and Franciscan Catholics. Sounds like a good group of people to be hanging around with. What is your taskhorse now, Mel? How many people are involved in how many countries? Where are you located? What are the hotspots or the cold spots or maybe the success stories, I guess? I suppose there's been failures as well. Yeah, all the above. We have 140 people who are at work in three locations. Our longest standing project over the past eight years has been in Sri Lanka. Our largest project right now with about 85 people on the ground is in the Mindanao region of the Philippines, where we are an official part of the ceasefire mechanism that is in place to monitor a ceasefire agreement that took place between the government of the Philippines and the moral Islamic Liberation Front. And our newest project is in South Sudan, where we've been on the ground for one year, working with local groups to help to prevent violence and to stabilize the situation as South Sudan becomes the newest nation on the earth. I would somehow imagine that this is much more cost effective than most of the so-called peacekeeping efforts. My history, by the way, Mel includes the fact that I was Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa for two years. So, I have some sense of how that works to change local perspective on Americans and on how we can do things together. Are there studies? Is there some kind of information? You could say, well, for $1 million we did this. The peacekeeping force was a billion dollars. I don't know. Is that kind of information out there? Sure. In the peacekeeping world, Mark, we are the fiscal conservatives. We can recruit, train, and deploy a very skilled unarmed civilian peacekeeper for about $70,000 a year. People in the United States today are paying about $1 million per year per soldier in Afghanistan. So, we can do not that the missions are identical, but we can provide peacekeeping and protection at a fraction of the cost of military peacekeepers. Could you talk, Mel, a little bit about the successes and failures, the learning situations you've been through? I mean, some people assume that the military knows how to do things. The way they get that way, the SEAL Team Six or whatever, is through extensive training. You do your own training. You have your learning that you've done feedback mechanisms, I assume, feeding into your training. What have you learned successes and failures over the years? We've had a number of successes on the ground. So, for example, we worked in Sri Lanka for a number of years on the successful return and protection of child soldiers. One morning, a group of mothers came to one of our teams. Their boys had been kidnapped the night before, and they wanted to go after their kids. They'd had enough. And this was extraordinary because there's such a culture of silence at that time in Sri Lanka for good reason, because often the price that you would pay would be another child. But these mothers wanted to go after their kids, so we helped them to find where the boys were being held in the jungle and accompanied the mothers to the camp. When the mothers got there, they confronted the young leaders who were in their 20s themselves, and the young men in charge of the camp said to the mothers, "You go away. This is no longer your matter." Can you imagine telling a mom, whose kid had just been kidnapped, that it was no longer their matter? Well, the moms held fast. Our team stayed there with them. So, these young leaders were aware enough to know that this was an international incident, that there were people around the world, the eyes, the ears, the conscience were right there at that moment in that camp in the jungle. So, they sent for their superiors discussions went on for about a day and a half, and the 26 boys were sent home with bus fare. And that's a good illustration of how we've learned to work. We aren't there to tell people, "This is what you should do. You should go after your kids." But when those mothers made the decision that they wanted to go after their sons, we were there to provide that presence with them so they would not be alone. And we were there not to do the negotiations, but to make sure that they were not alone. Another situation in Sri Lanka, a pair of journalists were jailed after writing a piece about the Sri Lankan military. Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists to work. So, we first had an international team visiting the jail so that the jailers would know that the people inside were connected and that they were being monitored. And so, late one night, the two journalists were let go, which is then the most dangerous time. So, those journalists immediately contacted our team, and for the next 46 days, we provided the accompaniment around the clock until we could arrange for them to gain asylum in another country where they're living today and alive. There was a firefight in the village in Mindanao, and people started to flee and come to a town and gather in the town square. Our teams were providing them safe passage so that they could get there, and when a family got to the square, they realized that they had forgotten grandma. They had assumed that she had come with another part of the family, and when the two parts of the family were reunited at the town square, they realized that grandma was back in the village that was being shelled. So, in that case, our country director was able to call the commander and to call for a ceasefire so that we could send a team back in to get grandma and bring her out. In South Sudan, which is a very volatile area right now as they worked towards independence, last summer, there was a situation where two children and 250 head of cattle had been stolen from one tribe by another tribe. And so, the aggrieved tribe started to arm themselves to go after the kids in the cattle. The chief called our team who came by motorbike because there's very few paved roads in South Sudan and were able to convene the two chiefs in an old church and to talk through things over a two-day period, and then the children in the cattle were returned. And the chief who called us was very clear. He said people would have been killed without this intervention. And so, that was just a matter of providing the protective space for people to come together and work out their differences, to work out their conflict and to stay alive. And so, the most important thing that we've learned is that the foundation of our work is relationship, and that our success depends on building strong relationships across lines. And that goes back to that unity message that I was pushed into 13, 14 years ago. I know this is going to be backtracking a bit, Mel, but you mentioned earlier, the previous attempts that had been out there, peace brigades, Balkan peace teams. I know that in Iraq there was the Christian peacekeeper teams, and there's the Muslim peacemaker teams. What's the difference between peace brigades, what they were doing, and what you're doing as non-violent peace force? First of all, I want to say that Peace Brigades International is still doing outstanding work in places like Colombia and Guatemala. They are 30 years old and have done groundbreaking work in terms of advancing the whole concept of unarmed civilian peacekeeping, especially in the area of accompaniment. The main difference between non-violent peace force and groups like Christian peacemaker teams and Muslim peacemaker teams and Peace Brigades International are, first of all, our peacekeepers are paid. Secondly, they tend to be deployed for much longer periods of time. They tend to be much more international in nature. Half of our peacekeepers come from the global south, and they employ a broader range of strategies in terms of unarmed civilian peacekeeping. We also have the aspiration and are working very directly to become large scale so that there can be a well-trained force of 2,000 unarmed civilian peacekeepers who would be available to the world to protect civilians and to prevent violence in some major conflicts in the world. You mentioned how many applicants you've been getting, how many people are out there in the field, Mel. What's the decision-making administrative control? How's that done? Is this an international organization? Is it incorporated somewhere? How does this work? Non-violent peace force is made up of 70 member organizations who are located throughout the world. We all came together for the express purpose of increasing the scale, the scope, the professionalism, and the international nature of unarmed civilian peacekeeping. Now, each of these groups does many different things, but our point of connection is around unarmed civilian peacekeeping. Our member organizations elect a international governance council on a regional basis, so each region gets two representatives except for Asia gets three and the international member organizations elect one member. And so we have a governing council of 14 members who meet regularly via conference call and then meet face-to-face once per year. And they're the ones who set the governance of the organization and make decisions. For example, they have to approve us starting a new project and sending the team, and they review the progress every year and the evaluations, and then they make the decision as to when we will exit a project. Our main office is located in Brussels, where our international executive director lives. Our main office in the United States is in Minneapolis. We're incorporated as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) in the United States, and we also are incorporated as an international nonprofit organization in Belgium. And what is your role at this moment in the organization? Do you have an official title? I actually didn't hear that. I am the director for advocacy and outreach, which means I spend a lot of my time working with various organizations like the UN in advancing the concept and the funding support for unarmed civilian peacekeeping. It's important to note, Mark, that at the end of the day, this is not about the promotion or the development of an organization like Nonviolent Peace Force. We're important as a vehicle to test out and to learn from and to advance this whole practice. But in the end, there's a lot of entities from neighborhood groups to grassroots organizations to national non-governmental organizations to government organizations that could employ unarmed civilian peacekeeping. And that's what we're really mostly about, is in addition to protecting civilians and preventing violence to advancing and learning from this whole concept of unarmed civilian peacekeeping. Clearly, a wonderful amount of work being done. I'm really impressed by the organizational thought, the philosophy, the overview. There's a whole lot of mental and hard work that goes into this organization. Where are you headed from here? What's up next? You got ideas coming up? We have several things that are on tap. First of all, we are developing a project in the South Caucasus, namely in Georgia and up Cosia. Secondly, we have had an exploration team that has just returned from Kyrgyzstan. They're filing their report with our governing council. And in Kyrgyzstan, we were invited by, among others, the president to send a team there. In addition to that, we have been invited and will be giving a one-day training for an interagency group at the United Nations in June about unarmed civilian peacekeeping and introducing people from, for example, the Department of Peacekeeping at the UN and the Department of Political Affairs and other entities within the UN. We will be introducing to them the whole theory and practice of unarmed civilian peacekeeping. This is beautiful, and I'm pretty sure most people have no idea that this is in the works. I guess you haven't gotten too many of the headlines yet. We have not gotten a lot of headlines, but let me emphasize that what has escaped the headlines of CNN has not escaped the consciousness of thousands of us. And that consciousness is what will prevail. I'm entirely sure that you will prevail, that work. It's so clearly coming straight from the divine. It's clear there's divine consciousness working in this process. Thank you so much for the work, Mel, and thank you for joining me for Spirit in Action. Market's been good to spend this time with you. My Spirit in Action guest today has been Mel Duncan, co-founder and dedicated force in advancing unarmed civilian peacekeeping and non-violent peace force. Find more at nonviolentpeaceforce.org or via northernspiritradio.org. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)