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USIP Publishes "Nonformal Dialogues in National Peacemaking: Complementary Approaches"

11/29/2019

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 The United State Institute of Peace published a report by Derek Brown, our co-director, entitled "Nonformal Dialogues in National Peacemaking: Complementary Approaches." The report draws extensively on the experiences of national stakeholders in both nonformal and formal national dialogue processes who participated in two international conferences on national dialogues in April 2014 and November 2015 that were hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland.
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Our Year End/Year Beginning Message.

12/31/2018

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Humanitarian and Peacebuilding Efforts Impacted by ​Counter-terrorism & Money Laundering Regulations

5/27/2017

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​May 25, 2017.   Our partners at the Charity and Security Network continue to monitor and work to reverse the closing regulatory space for humanitarian relief and peacebuilding organizations.  They've just highlighted three new reports studying the impact on civil society of new counter-terrorism and money-laundering regulations, and the efforts of civil society coalitions to the improve the regulatory environment that impedes charitable organizations' humanitarian work.   The reports include a study released by Chatham House, the other by Bread for the World, and a third by UN Special Rapporteur Miana Kiai. 
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Kristiina Rintakoski Joins the Peace Appeal’s Board of Directors

5/11/2016

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Kristiina Rintakoski
The Peace Appeal Foundation is pleased to announce that Kristiina Rintakoski has joined the organization’s Board of Directors. Kristiina brings a wealth of experience in peacebuilding globally. She presently works as a Director for Peacebuilding and Advocacy at the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission, one of the largest Finish civil society organizations working in global development. She has over 15 years of experience in policy analysis and programme planning in mediation support, peacebuilding and national dialogue processes. Regionally much of her work has focused on Myanmar, Syria and Nepal. Before joining FELM, she served as Programme Director at the Crisis Management Initiative for 10 years, leading the development of CMI’s crisis management, conflict resolution and peacebuilding projects and activities. Prior to that, she worked at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. She holds Master’s degrees in International Relations from the University of Tampere, Finland and in Human Rights from the University of Padova, Italy. 
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A New Beginning: Forgiveness & Hope

1/4/2016

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Peace 2015 Lanterns: Paper lanterns in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome, Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. Credits: AP/CC BY

​In this season during which people of many cultures and faiths celebrate renewal, we share with you a poem written by Fr Michael Weeder, a board member of the Peace Appeal Foundation.   Michael is Dean of St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town, a church once led by Archbishop Tutu. The poem was written in Helsinki, Finland at a conference on the role of dialogue in peace and national change processes.   It was started in the hours after the attacks in Paris and Beirut.   

Michael's poem echoes the work and values of many, including Aung San Suu Kyi's recent remarks on the need to reach out to Myanmar's former rulers, as well as to the words of Archbishop Tutu and his daughter Mpho, in their powerful recent book, The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World. Its theme of forgiveness is central to the work of peacemakers everywhere, to the possibility of renewal more broadly, and to hopes for peaceful coexistence in our tumultuous world. 
When We Forgive

When we forgive,
the shrapnel of the bombs -

assigned to Paris, today
Beirut, yesterday
Palestine, Syria...
every other day

will never pierce
will never pierce

our soft, invincible hearts
when we forgive.



(Helsinki, Monday, 16 November 2015)
The Very Reverend Michael Weeder
 
Wishing you a peaceful and blessed new year filled with hope.
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Peace Appeal Year End Update - 2015

12/23/2015

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Myanmar/Burma News & Announcing A New Fellowship

5/28/2015

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Technology & Design in Peacebuilding, Issue 5 of Building Peace

3/25/2015

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Wishes for a joyous and peaceful 2015!

1/1/2015

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Peace Appeal Year End Newsletter - 2014

12/19/2014

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Women, Men and Peace: Issue Three Just Published

11/5/2014

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The Nobel Peace Prize & the Meaning of Positive Peace

10/14/2014

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A New Year’s Greeting from Syria to Share

12/31/2013

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2013 Reflections on Peacebuiding

12/19/2013

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The Power of Forgiveness: Madiba's Legacy

12/6/2013

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Reflections on Friday's Nobel Peace Prize

10/15/2013

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Lending a Hand in the Internet Age...

8/27/2013

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Sunday's NY Times, Tom Friedman on Yemen's National Dialogue

5/13/2013

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Laureates Nominate New Members

2/26/2013

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Our Greetings for the New Year!

12/21/2012

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Annual Report 2012

12/19/2012

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​Don’t Prosecute the Peacemakers 

2/24/2010

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The U.S. Supreme Court soon will decide whether peacemakers can be sent to jail for trying to end civil wars and promote human rights.  The central issue in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which comes before the court today, is whether conflict resolution professionals and human rights advocates are providing “material support” to terrorist organizations when they attempt to persuade members of violent resistance movements to comply with international law, teach them how to pursue their causes through the legal system, and include them in talks designed to end hostilities.   The lower courts essentially held that training, advocacy, facilitation and similar forms of assistance intended to end violence and promote the rule of law are not prohibited under the anti-terrorism statute the government seeks to apply to these activities.   The Supreme Court should affirm and expand the lower courts’ decisions.

Groups that use violence against noncombatants are deemed terrorist organizations under U.S. law. This characterization is premised on the belief, which I share, that violence against innocents is reprehensible and far exceeds the bounds of fair play, no matter how legitimate a group’s desire for political recognition or independence.   Talk and nonviolent forms of advocacy are how politics should be played.

How ironic, then, that U.S. law could be interpreted to prohibit NGOs from helping representatives of foreign governments and members of opposition groups talk with one another; teaching opposition leaders how to use national and international legal processes, rather than weapons, to register their grievances; and training combatants how to comply with the Geneva Conventions while violence persists.  Prohibiting material support that furthers violence makes good sense, and the statute at issue in the case does indeed explicitly ban provision of weapons, lethal substances, money, and similar items.  However, the statute also contains vague prohibitions on “training,” “expert advice or assistance” and “services” that encompass forms of political expression designed to reduce violence, as well as activities that promote or enable violence.

My organization, the Peace Appeal Foundation, whose founders include five Nobel Peace Laureates, helps construct and facilitate peace processes upon invitation from parties to a conflict.  Why is the Obama administration, like the Clinton and Bush administrations before it, arguing that U.S. law should be interpreted to preclude the peace and human rights promoting work of our organization, the Carter Center, Human Rights Watch, and other NGOs represented in the case?  It argues that Congress intended to preclude on national security grounds all forms of support to groups designated as terrorist organizations.  The record of Congress’ deliberations is far from clear on this point, however, and the statute itself explicitly exempts some forms of support to designated terrorist organizations.

No doubt the real reason successive administrations have attempted to apply the law to activities designed to reduce violence and increase human rights compliance is a desire to determine who engages with groups they have chosen to designate as terrorist organizations, as well as the terms of engagement.  This rationale, if true, should inspire both sympathy and concern.

It should inspire our sympathy because NGOs have come to play an increasingly significant role in international affairs over the past several decades, making invaluable contributions, but sometimes also complicating the work of diplomats and other officials.  To be sure, it also is true that some groups use legitimate activities as fronts for weapons trafficking, money laundering, and providing training in combat techniques to designated terrorist groups.

Nonetheless, a law banning activities intended to reduce violence and promote human rights is cause for serious concern for a several reasons: 
  •  First and foremost, if we truly want disputes to be resolved nonviolently, we should create and enhance opportunities for this to happen.  A law that discourages effective political engagement by opposition groups is a law that contributes to violence and human rights abuses.
  •  These activities are themselves important forms of constitutionally protected political expression and association. 
  •  It is an open secret within the diplomatic community, and among international human rights and conflict resolution professionals, that governments generally want all-party talks to occur, even when they make tough pronouncements against negotiating with terrorists until violence is renounced.   Indeed, the earliest back-channel efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were tacitly permitted to occur at a time when the laws of each nation made talking to a member of the other nation a capital offense.
  •  Under current law, the government can grant exemptions from the material support legislation, but the process can be long and outcomes arbitrary.   The United Nations and other governments often stand ready to fund work by U.S.-based groups and individuals that can be impeded by interminable administrative delays.  Indeed, the designation of groups as terrorist organizations is itself a highly politicized – and, some might say, arbitrary – process.  For example, the PLO and IRA have never been designated as terrorist organizations, despite their use of violence against noncombatants.
  •  Neither the U.S., nor any other single government, can possibly determine who helps designated terrorist organizations engage in dialogue and judicial processes, and how they do so.  There are simply too many actors who are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.  Furthermore, in any major conflict, multiple actors and streams of activity contribute to any eventual resolution.  While some level of coordination among actors is desirable, it is impossible for any single actor to dictate the terms of the process, and efforts to do so are counterproductive.  Preventing groups and individuals resident in the U.S. from engaging in peacemaking and human rights work in conflicts where one of the parties has been designated a terrorist organization simply ensures that they cannot contribute to advances toward the cessation of violence and respect for the rule of law, without any counterbalancing positive effects.

As applied to peacemaking activities and human rights work, these concerns undercut the logic of any
law or policy that subjects political expression intended to reduce violence and promote the rule of law to prior, and potentially arbitrary, government restraint.

The administration’s security concerns are real and significant, yet they can be addressed in ways that impinge less on other national interests and the civil rights of advocates for peace and the rule of law. For example, Congress could amend the statute to require U.S.-based groups and individuals doing conflict resolution and human rights work to provide the government with notice of the fact that they are interacting with members of designated terrorist organizations.  Wherever our organization is active, we go out of our way, with the knowledge of the national stakeholders, to inform the U.S. and other foreign governments of our activities and create opportunities for them to participate in appropriate elements of the process.   Our experience in numerous conflict zones, including Nepal, where we helped end a decades-long civil war between the former monarch and a group designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, confirms that conflicts are seldom resolved without the active involvement and support of the international community.

Another reason successive administrations have attempted to enforce the material support statute against peacemakers may be a belief that the best way to deal with resistance movements that have resorted to violence is to attempt to discredit and isolate them.  If true, this rationale is misguided.  These groups often have legitimate grievances that fall on deaf ears within governments that may be
oppressive or corrupt.  In many of the conflicts in which members of our organization have been active, including South Africa, Sri Lanka and Nepal, resistance groups advocated nonviolently for recognition and rights for years before the hawkish elements within them turned to violence.

As the Clinton administration’s experience in Northern Ireland demonstrates, peace does not break out spontaneously.  Parties must talk, and the legitimate grievances and political representatives of resistance groups must be recognized as such, even as violent conduct is legitimately condemned.
Obama campaigned on the premise that talk matters in international relations, and that talk can work.
Let’s not punish the peacemakers as they attempt to affirm that principle.

Jeff Seul is chairman of the Peace Appeal Foundation.
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Annual Report 2008

12/31/2008

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Fall 2007 Update

9/12/2007

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Peace Appeal Winter Update - December 2006

12/1/2006

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Peace Appeal Foundation Newsletter - December 2006
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