15 members of the Creating Safer Space network took actively part in an International Gathering of Unarmed Civilian Protection and Accompaniment Organisations, which was held in Ferney-Voltaire, France and Geneva, Switzerland from 9-11 October 2023. Organised by Nonviolent Peaceforce with input from a range of UCP/A stakeholders, this was “the first global gathering of UCP/A practitioners, their community partners, researchers and allies collaborating to advance the UCP/A Community of Practice by creating opportunities to grapple with shared issues, explore creative solutions, and build relationships with colleagues working around the world”.
N+ members – from the core network team, different project teams, and the advisory board – were involved in planning, implementing and facilitating the gathering, offered workshops on different UCP/A-related topics including decolonisation, learning and evaluation, looming threats, and peace processes, spoke about UCP and community self-protection research at a policy event for humanitarian organisations and UN member countries, and contributed to the gathering more widely by sharing their experiences and knowledges.
Ellen Furnari, Creating Safer Space advisory board member, played an essential role in the research and planning process that led up to this Gathering. Ellen together with core N+ team members Nerve Macaspac, Rachel Julian and Roger Mac Ginty organised a workshop on “Learning What Works in UCP/A”, while core team members Beatriz Arias López and Laura Jimenez were active in the “Decolonising UCP/A” process and workshop. South Sudan project team member Moses John contributed to the “Looming threats: Shaping challenges into strategies” plenary, and project PI Juan Mario Diaz led a workshop on “The Role of UCP/A in Contemporary Peace Processes”.
Project PI Enrique Chimonja Coy and Network PI Berit Bliesemann de Guevara contributed to a Policy Roundtable, co-hosted by the Permanent Missions of the Netherlands, Costa Rica, the Philippines and Sierra Leone to the United Nations and Nonviolent Peaceforce.
Other N+ members participating in different roles in the Gathering included project team members from or working in Colombia, Myanmar, and Indonesia, and Palestine. The Gathering was co-facilitated by Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and Beatriz Arias López.
The N+ team also organised a small preview of the Creating Safer Space exhibition, which involves creative outputs from our projects and will be shown in full in different locations around the world in 2024.
Learn more about the Community of Practice process and the Gathering here.
