In this interview, ICNC speaks with Egyptian activist, Ahmed Salah - one of the co-founders of the 6th of April Youth Movement, a key organizer of nonviolent action, and a FSI 2009 alum.  Salah talks about the various strategies that were learned, developed, and implemented by activists and civil society groups in the years leading up to the Jan 25 protests, which after 18 days of nonviolent mass action, led to the ouster of Egypt's former President, Hosni Mubarak.

In this interview ICNC speaks with Nadine Bloch, a trainer and practitioner of nonviolent direct action. Nadine has worked with several activist groups and has been involved in several campaigns for the environment, social justice, and civil rights. Bloch expands on "traditional" conceptions of nonviolent direct action by stressing the importance of creativity, art, and culture in making these actions powerful and effective in ways that resonate with activists and help build the capacity of movements.

In this interview ICNC speaks with Stellan Vinthagen, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Peace and Development at Goteborg University and University West in Sweden. He is also one of ICNC's academic advisors.  In this interview Vinthagen talks about how his family inspired him to learn more about nonviolent civil resistance and then begin engaging in this type of resistance himself.  He talks about how he blends his roles as both an academic and an activist and provides examples of actions that unite these two aspects of his life.  Lastly, he speaks about his experience working with and learning from the landless movement in Brazil and the various ways they have engaged in successful and strategic nonviolent civil resistance.

In this interview ICNC speaks with Ayed Morrar, a leader of the nonviolent movement in Budrus who organized the first Popular Committee Against the Wall in the West Bank by uniting all local Palestinian political factions, including Hamas and Fatah, and encouraging hundreds of Israelis to cross into the Occupied Palestinian Territories and demonstrate in support of his village. When challenged by his teenage daughter, he welcomed the launch of a women's contingent that quickly moved to the front lines. Ayed and the successful popular nonviolent struggle are featured in Just Vision's recent film, Budrus. (Just Vision). 

In this interview ICNC speaks with Jane Fritz, an organizer and educator with the Thailand/Burma Border Project.  In this capacity, Jane works with civil society actors and various ethnic groups who are resisting multiple forms of oppressions and injustice under Burma's military Junta.  Fritz talks about successful ways Burmese have use nonviolent action to resist their country's military junta, and the various techniques and strategies she uses as an educator in sharing and teaching about human rights and the power of nonviolent action.

In this interview ICNC speaks with Tom Hastings - member of the Governing Council of the International Peace Research Association, former co-chair and current board member of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, Director of PeaceVoice (a program of the Oregon Peace Institute), founder of Whitefeather Peace House, a former Plowshares resister and nonviolent felon (twice) for peace and disarmament, and author of several books on nonviolence as well as peer-reviewed journal articles, peer-reviewed book chapters on nonviolence, and an entry in the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace.  

Hastings speaks about the ways in which the US Civil Rights movement inspired him to learn more about and participate in various nonviolent movements, including several plowshare actions as part of the anti-nuclear movement.

In this interview, ICNC speaks with Oleg Kozlovsky, organizer and Russian pro-democracy activist who has been involved with the youth movement Oborona, and the Solidarity Democratic Movement.  Basic democratic freedoms like freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and an independent judiciary have suffered in Russia in recent years and many people, particularly the youth, have started to mobilize one another to demand a stronger democratic system free of corruption and intimidation.  Oleg has been one of the leaders in this growing pro-democracy movement, training young people in nonviolent methods of resistance.  The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars recently awarded Oleg the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award for his ideas and accomplishments in working on behalf of democracy.

In this interview ICNC speaks with Ilaina Rabbat, a 2010 alum of the Fletcher Summer Institute, and a program manager for Ashoka's Youth Venture program.  Her career involves working with young people throughout South America to build their capacity as successful change agents in their respective communities, tackling social issues in creative and innovative ways.  As an organizer in this field, Ila's work is closely tied to Gandhi's idea of the "constructive program" - the idea that in a nonviolent struggle, people may need to do more than just resist the status quo, they may also need to create new structures, institutions, and lifestyles in order to start living the alternative future they seek to create.  As Gandhi said, "we must be the change we wish to see in the world."  Ila's work with Youth Venture is a prime example of this idea put into practice.

Located on the western rim of the Pacific, bordering the independent state of Papua New Guinea, West Papua is a Melanesian nation in waiting. Under the Dutch the territory was the easternmost limit of the far-flung Dutch East Indies. On May 1, 1963, after less than one year of transitional rule by the United Nations, power was formerly transferred to the Republic of Indonesia. One condition of the transfer of administrative control was that there would be an internationally supervised act of self-determination. A sham ’referendum’ known as the ‘Act of Free Choice’, and supervised by the United Nations, took place between May and July 1969. On 19 November 1969 the United Nations General Assembly formally ‘took note’ that the results of the Act of Free Choice did not accurately or democratically represent the will of the people, however it still proceeded to recognise Indonesian government rule in West Papua. Since then the territory has been the scene of one of the most protracted, complex and volatile conflicts in the Pacific. Read full conflict summary.

Over fifteen years ago, violent conflict ravaged Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and its neighbors. A fragile peace has held since 1996, and rapid reconstruction and steady development offer hope that the country will eventually be on the path to European Union integration. Why, during this period of stabilization and internationally-monitored political development, would a group of Bosnian youth form a nonviolent social movement and name it Dosta! (Enough! in English language)? According to Darko Brkan, a Dosta! organizer living in Sarajevo, this is exactly the moment for a citizens movement, or as he calls it, a “socially engaged culture.”