In a community in South America, some international volunteers spend time with a local human rights activist, knowing their very presence will help protect this person from the death threats they receive. The volunteers accompany this person as they travel to investigate human rights abuses, go to and from their office, and sometimes as they sleep in their home, to provide protection through the volunteers’ presence. The volunteers may send letters to government and/or military officials telling them where they are going and when. They may let people from their home country embassies know where they are, and where and when they are going elsewhere. In this way they add to their physical presence evidence of a broad network of relationships. Overall, they increase the safety for the human rights activist to carry on their work in more places and with more people than would likely be possible without them.

In a city in an African country experiencing significant political violence, a local religious leader, some women from the market and others work together to protect their community nonviolently. They collaborate to both prevent armed young men from other neighbourhoods and ethnicities coming into their neighbourhood, as well as preventing the young men from their neighbourhood going out to commit violence elsewhere. Their section of the city does not experience the violence that occurs around them.

In a rural area in an Asian country, local people have been trained by outsiders to monitor a ceasefire. When different armed groups violate certain provisions, these community people often contact them and point out they are in violation. Sometimes this leads to armed actors moving out of schools, or moving out of contested areas, decreasing the likelihood of violence. They also have some success in getting abducted youth released, and people detained on false charges let go.

These are just three examples of ways that civilians protect themselves and other civilians, without the use or threat of violence. Sometimes called unarmed civilian protection, unarmed civilian peacekeeping or accompaniment (UCP/A) this introduction will provide some framing of UCP/A as background for the chapters in this book.