{"id":50821,"date":"2019-08-20T20:06:27","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T20:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/metta\/?p=50821"},"modified":"2019-09-09T18:31:36","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T18:31:36","slug":"preventing-mass-atrocities-hardy-merriman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/metta\/2019\/08\/preventing-mass-atrocities-hardy-merriman\/","title":{"rendered":"Preventing mass atrocities \u2014 a conversation with Hardy Merriman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<a id=\"zTuq0yVmQrd9Xz9VtLDbsA\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1039194672\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'zTuq0yVmQrd9Xz9VtLDbsA',sig:'C2HhNPXbzapWqRghnOwKO44DF94-Vl21mCpYGcLnWcQ=',w:'594px',h:'391px',items:'1039194672',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" async=\"\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nonviolence is spreading all over the world. The research on it is developing and deepening. And we\u2019re finding that we can offer not only advice and input and support for activists around the world, but also in terms of policy change, especially making policy change support nonviolent movements worldwide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had a chance to speak with Hardy Merriman, president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, based in Washington, D.C. We discussed the meaning of strategic nonviolent action, as well as their special report &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nonviolent-conflict.org\/right-to-assist\/\">Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsibility to Protect to a Right to Assist.<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here are a few excerpts from our interview, edited for length and clarity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Hardy Merriman, you are the president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. What\u2019s your story?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nonviolent-conflict.org\/right-to-assist\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"232\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/metta\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/08\/Right-to-Assist-1-791x1024-232x300.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-50823\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/metta\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/08\/Right-to-Assist-1-791x1024-232x300.png 232w, https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/metta\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/08\/Right-to-Assist-1-791x1024-768x994.png 768w, https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/metta\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/08\/Right-to-Assist-1-791x1024.png 791w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first thing that brought me to it was a strong, strong desire to see some kind of justice in this world. And in particular, to help promote a more peaceful world and human rights. And that\u2019s a question I struggled with from a fairly early age. And at one point thought I was going to actually get involved in electoral politics in the United States. But as luck and circumstance would have it, I encountered the writings of Gene Sharp in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And basically, I saw that Gene Sharp, for readers who don\u2019t know, is one of the \u2013was one of the leading scholars in the field of nonviolent action. And so, basically, I found Gene in 2002 and said, \u201cI want to work for you.\u201d And I wouldn\u2019t really leave him alone until he hired me, and I did get a job. 17 years later, I\u2019m in the field and it\u2019s endlessly interesting. It feels incredibly impactful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And, you know, the demand keeps growing for this kind of knowledge and this kind of work. So, I feel gratified and lucky to be able to continue to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This idea of &#8220;people power,&#8221; can you speak to that? Because somebody recently said to us, \u201cYou know, I\u2019d like to help make change in our country and in our world, but we are not the ones that have any power. It\u2019s the politicians.\u201d How would you respond to something like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sure. So, institutions have power, right? We\u2019re taught, generally, that if we want to make change on a macro scale, at a big scale, then institutions are the way to go. And the two big institutions to do that in the United States would be the electoral system and the legal system. Indeed, those are powerful \u2013 when they work. And then there\u2019s a whole set of circumstances in which they haven\u2019t worked, in which they\u2019ve been insufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And when that happens, the question is what other force can be brought to bear on that situation? It\u2019s going to have to be a force that comes outside of institutions because the institutions themselves are not sufficient. And this isn\u2019t just a problem we\u2019ve had in U.S. history \u2013 and continue to have. It\u2019s a problem that we\u2019ve had all over the world, and that is acute in many parts of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What people have done consistently is discover the power of collective action, that if we change our behaviour and obedience and consent patterns, if we change our buying habits, our work habits, and a variety of other, you know, small high risk or low risk, big or small ways, we can actually change the balance of power in society. In many societies the status quo comes from people behaving in predictable ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And when people do think like strike or boycott and do it in a strategic way&#8211;unified way with clear goals, they\u2019re able to wield power that most people assume could never happen. And yet, we look around the world. We look in U.S. history and we look around the world. We see consistently that organized nonviolent people have won. And the prevailing view of power is one that it comes from control of material resources or the capacity for violence, or the capacity to control the information environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yet again, you look, whether it\u2019s Women\u2019s Suffrage Movement or the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, or the Labor Movement, or struggles against dictatorships around the world, you\u2019ll say, \u201cHow is that significant numbers of nonviolent people are able to defeat opponents who seem to have all the advantages?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, it\u2019s because our definition of power needs to expand so that we can see that actually shifting the behaviour of lots of people is incredibly powerful, and can wield real force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>That\u2019s beautiful, Hardy. And you used a term, \u201cStrategic.\u201d Can you speak more to that?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sure. I mean&#8211; the first step in strategic planning process would be an assessment of the situation you\u2019re in. Who are the different actors or groups in that situation? Both those who oppose you as well as those who are your allies and yourself, and those who are neutral, as well as sort of the general political, socioeconomic circumstances. Why does the status quo exist the way it is? And part of a strategic analysis \u2013 there are many different pieces of it. One piece would be assessing if we have a sense of why the status quo exists. \u201cOkay, we buy these products. The money goes there. Then it goes there. Then it goes there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then that money feeds into policies that really don\u2019t serve us and actually oppress us. We say, \u201cOkay. Well, so there is actually a dependency link at some point in that chain, where we have to do something. By buying, by behaving in predictable ways, we\u2019re actually part of a process that\u2019s actually coming back and hurting us.&#8221; There are many, many points of leverage that can be identified like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you do that assessment, you actually might find 20 or 30 depending on what your circumstance is where you might be able to shift \u2013 you\u2019re doing a nonviolent action to disrupt a certain relationship. And then the question is, &#8220;well, what\u2019s going to be most effective? What\u2019s the sequence of tactics that will be most effective? What\u2019s the messaging that\u2019s going to be most effective? What goals do you want to pursue, concretely, clearly? What goals do you want to pursue?&#8221; And all of those are real questions that require skill and strategic thinking to figure out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Explain the concept of the Right to Assist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We developed the idea of a Right to Assist sort of in contrast with the Responsibility to Protect. So, the Responsibility to Protect is an international doctrine that exists now. Right to Assist is an international doctrine that we want to bring into existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Responsibility to Protect came about as a response to atrocities in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo in the 1990s. And it was adopted, if I recall correctly, in 2005 in the United Nations. It basically has three pillars. And the first pillar says that all states have a responsibility. If you\u2019re going to call yourself a sovereign government of a particular population, a particular country, you have the &#8220;responsibility to protect&#8221; your population from mass atrocities, which are: genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. You have a responsibility to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pillar Two says, \u201cThe international community and the United Nations will help governments that request it to protect their population.\u201d So, if a government feels that it doesn\u2019t have the capacity to provide that responsible protection to its population, the international community can help that government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then Pillar Three says, \u201cIf a government does not protect its population and refuses help to do so, it has effectively given up its sovereign claim to be able to call the shots within that territory. And therefore, the international community can intervene forcibly, including with armed intervention. And so, that is the prevailing doctrine, how to prevent atrocities.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was given a major test run in Libya in 2011 and with very, very mixed results that I \u2013 we could spend a whole [interview] on that, but I won\u2019t go into it. But there are plenty of arguments that could be made, that in fact, we\u2019ll never know for certain. But what we do know for certain is that intervention in Libya certainly didn\u2019t stop violence. There was significant violence afterward. There was significant destabilization afterwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We won\u2019t know what the scope or the scale of what would have happened if that intervention hadn\u2019t happened. But the intervention itself was extremely problematic. And moreover, after that intervention happened, the Russian and Chinese governments said, \u201cWe\u2019re never going to vote for violent intervention under Responsibility to Protect again,\u201d because, you know, NATO was supposed to stop an atrocity by Muammar Gaddafi and instead they got Gaddafi out of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, Russia and China said, \u201cWe gave this mandate to stop an atrocity. You interpreted that mandate as getting him out of power. That\u2019s not what we interpreted. That\u2019s not what we voted for. We don\u2019t trust you anymore to wield this power responsibly. And we\u2019re not going to vote for it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And on the NATO side they said, \u201cIf we stop Gaddafi from committing an atrocity, how can we possibly leave him in power afterward? He\u2019ll probably just commit one subsequently, so we need to remove him from power.\u201d So, what happened in 2011 deadlocked responsibility to protect a significant portion of it. And subsequently, we\u2019ve seen atrocities take place in Syria and other places with no clear international mandate on what to do about it. So, that\u2019s some background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so Peter Ackerman and I said, \u201cThere is a different way to think about atrocity prevention and Right to Assist is part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Are there any laws or international laws in place right now that would prevent groups and governments from supporting nonviolent movements when there are mass atrocities? Would they say, for example, those groups are placed on terrorist lists because that term, terrorism\/terrorist, is a political term?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Can you speak to the work that this report is actually trying to do in that regard of kind of making a breakthrough in terms of whether there are laws against supporting nonviolent movements?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, two things. I mean the first is that a big part of our argument is not just that atrocities could be stopped if they\u2019re happening. But just they could be averted because one of the prime reasons why atrocities happen is because groups choose to take arms. So, by one measure, about two-thirds of atrocities have taken place in the context of civil wars. And we\u2019ve seen, for example, in Syria, atrocities happen once the nonviolent opposition shifted to violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we can make people aware of, can support them, and incentivize the choice to wage nonviolent struggle rather than violence, we will&#8211;and statistically speaking&#8211; reduce the probability of atrocities happening. In terms of different ways of support and to the legal basis, we pull together different strands of thinking in international law. The first step is saying, \u201cIs civil resistance protected under international human rights law?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the answer by and large is \u201cyes.\u201d I mean depending on the tactic, but many, many tactics would be protected under most international human rights law. And then this question of, \u201cOkay, well, is there reciprocity in certain human rights?\u201d So, for example, if I have the right to associate as a dissident, do I have the right to be associated with? And various thinkers, we draw on the thinking of Elizabeth Wilson, who\u2019s a scholar. We draw on the thinking of Maina Kiai, who\u2019s former special Rapporteur on freedom of association for the United Nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, yes, this is a reciprocal right. If I have a right to associate with you, how do you associate with me, even across borders? If I have a right to express to you, I have a right to also receive your expression, to be expressed to. This enables at a minimum, information exchange, right? But arguably, significantly more than that. Resources, funding, and then the more interventionists sort of forms of assistance may be triggered depending on the extent of repression used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, if you say some order comes from representing a population but you (a dictator) are not giving that population any chance to actually give you sovereignty because you\u2019ve taken it, and simply claimed it; and they don\u2019t have a chance to regularly express and show that they\u2019re actually choosing you, your claim to sovereignty and [willingness] stop what\u2019s happening becomes weak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because you\u2019re not actually providing the real holders of sovereignty, the people to vest you with that authority. And so, if you start using repression, when significant numbers of your population are advocating for their rights, you\u2019re effectively making your claim to sovereignty weaker and weaker and weaker. And this can be used to justify increasing forms of intervention for a nonviolent movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Transcription provided by Matthew Watrous.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hardy Merriman of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict discusses the meaning of strategic nonviolent action and the new concept of &#8220;right to assist.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":50822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,60],"tags":[127,15,75,80,126,95],"region":[3,6,31,58],"series":[],"article_type":[],"class_list":["post-50821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-democracy","category-education","category-militarism","tag-china","tag-civil-rights-movement","tag-protests","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-united-states","region-africa","region-asia","region-europe","region-middle-east"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.2 (Yoast SEO v28.2) - 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