An Update on the TPNI Curriculum Development Project

By Daniel Hunter & George Lakey
May 2002

This spring's violence in Israel and Palestine ignited a response from hundreds of volunteers from Europe, North America and elsewhere who risked their lives to intervene as "human shields." Internationals dashed into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to join the mix of people seeking refuge inside. Other internationals made their way through a ring of tanks to get inside the Ramallah compound of Arafat. Many volunteers were posted with families in refugee camps. The idea was the same: through their nonviolent presence, the volunteers hoped to offer some measure of protection against violence.

The human shields in Palestine were probably the most publicized episode yet in humanity's series of experiments in inventing a new social technique: third party nonviolent intervention (TPNI).

Although this form of action has probably been taken by unsung individuals throughout history, its organizational expression is new. The best-known group, the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Peace Brigades International (PBI), started only twenty years ago and has done work in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Sri Lanka. It currently is involved in Indonesia/East Timor, Colombia and Mexico.

Training for Change has over time directly trained TPNI volunteers for various missions and also trained trainers for PBI and Christian Peacemaker Teams. TfC has recently taken on a new assignment: to create a training curriculum that will prepare a "peace army" to be able to enter situations of open conflict on a larger scale than previous efforts have been able to mount.

CURRICULUM DRAFTING ACCELERATED

We've now committed to having the first training curriculum draft done by November, 2002, in time for the founding convention in New Delhi of the Nonviolent PeaceForce (NP). NP is a new global nongovernmental organization which aims to mobilize hundreds and possibly thousands into a multi-national, multi-cultural "peace army." The founding convention will be in New Delhi because Gandhi was the most notable early visionary in this field; he called for the creation of a Shanti Sena to stand between fighting antagonists.

At the New Delhi convention in November the draft curriculum will be reviewed and critiqued along with the pilot project's location to be chosen (Sri Lanka, Colombia, Israel/Palestine, or other locations). TfC will revise it in the light of feedback and be prepared to organize the training in March 2003 for the first, pilot, intervention by Nonviolent PeaceForce. In the light of that experience the curriculum will again be revised and made available to all organizations that do TPNI projects anywhere in the world.

CREATING THE CURRICULUM A DYNAMIC PROCESS

To create the curriculum the TfC team of Daniel Hunter and George Lakey has compiled probably the most comprehensive collection of nonviolent intervention materials available, consulted widely with groups engaged in similar or parallel activities, collected a wide assortment of training tools and activities, and networked with groups currently involved with third-party nonviolent intervention around the world. The most important single product so far has been a list of two dozen "core proficiencies" which third party nonviolent interveners need to develop in the course of the training; these proficiencies, distilled from wide experience, are the centerpiece of the curriculum.

Those consulted include: Nairobi Peace Institute, Naga activists (in India), American Friends Service Committee, Cambodian trainers, West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, Norwegian peacekeeping specialists at the United Nations, researchers at the Eastern Mennonite University, Nonviolence International, and some of the NGO's that do TPNI (Christian Peacemaker Teams, Guatamalan Accompaniment Project, Witness for Peace, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Peace Brigades International).

TfC has agreed with Nonviolent PeaceForce to use its international training committee as our primary feedback mechanism, and our team will be in New Delhi to participate in the founding convention.

Already the preliminary work we've done is proving helpful to several organizations. We've been facilitating the Philadelphia area chapter of Nonviolent PeaceForce, and negotiating further short-term TPNI trainings outside the context of NP.

We're helping design the basic training and providing trainers for "Freedom Summer," the intervention of Europeans and North Americans in Israel/Palestine organized by International Solidarity Movement.