Description
This paper discusses the synergies between nonviolent forms of community-led unarmed civilian protection and these communities’ grassroots resistance against physical and structural violences in contexts of armed conflict. While the literatures on civil resistance and unarmed civilian protection have been growing over the last three decades, few studies have brought these two forms of nonviolent action at the grassroots level of communities into one conceptual and analytical framework. What is more, unarmed civilian protection is sometimes seen to passively cement the power status quo and hence dismissed as a form of resistance. This paper tries to remedy this misconception by taking first steps towards a protection-as-resistance framework. Empirically, it draws on the rich insights of the Creating Safer Space research network, which supported 26 research projects with communities in 11 low- and middle-income countries across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, to better understand and support unarmed community self-protection amidst violent conflict.
