Strategies, Tactics and Activities in Intervention

We here concentrate on a few types of actors in nonviolent or civilian intervention:

• 1. Peace teams and Civil Peace Services.

Those nongovernmental organisations selected here practice third party nonviolent intervention by placing teams in situations of conflict and instability for more than a short-term visit, march or demonstration. These team-sending organizations have built reputations for maintaining a principled and courageous presence with people who are at risk in conflict. They have additionally analyzed their own work and thus increased our understanding of nonviolent intervention.

Included here are Balkan Peace Team, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Peace Brigades International, SIPAZ, Osijek Peace Teams and Witness for Peace.

For the European Civil Peace Services examples are from the German, the Austrian and the Italian Services, because the other projects have either not yet nor are planning to deploy personnel to the field. Interviews with several key organisers have complemented data taken from publication of the CPS organisations.

• 2. Development and humanitarian aid organisations. Interviews with a few representatives of such organisations have also here complemented data taken from publications.

• 3. Civilian governmental missions: Here are five examples of different types of larger-scale missions presented: different NGO (and one UN) election monitoring missions in South Africa in 1994 and 1995, the Peace Monitoring Group in Bougainville being there since 1997, the OSCE Mission in Kosovo 1998/99, and UN missions in El Salvador and East Timor. The information for this and the following sub-chapter has been taken mainly from publications on these missions, complemented by reports of the missions that they tend to make available on the internet

• 4. Military-based interventions are being considered under two aspects: first, there are lessons learned from these missions which might also hold true for unarmed missions. And secondly, there is the issue of replacing their functions by civilian activities.

For all these examples we have looked into their character and goals, their activities, the outcomes and impact(1), and tried to formulate as lessons learned conditions for successful complex projects or missions of the respective type.

Notes :

• (1) : The separation of outcomes and impact is taken from the Impact Assessment methodology as it has been developed in recent years by developmental organisations (Oxfam, GTZ). Impact is defined here as “significant or lasting changes in people’s lives, brought about by a given action or series of action”. (Roche 1999:21). Outcomes are the immediate effects of activities, independently of their sustainability. For example: A legal rights awareness training course (activity) might lead to people being aware of their rights (outcome). Impact then is if people successfully claim rightgs, and enjoy increased quality of life as a result. (Roche 99:22)