Colombia and Guatemala are among the world’s most persistently violent countries. Chronic violence is carried out by both state and non-state groups, in schools, other public spaces or within families. Amidst widespread fear and mistrust, a range of civil society organisations are promoting non-violence and good citizenship.

Research from the University of Bradford, in the UK, looks at how civil society organisations (CSOs) are working to build non-violent and rights-based societies. Their efforts are vital to breaking the cycle of violence in countries such as Colombia and Guatemala.

Elite groups in conflict-prone countries use violence to preserve a status quo of unequal distribution of resources. To do so, they ally with private groups willing to use violence for their own purposes and tolerate or encourage abuses by state security agents. Failing to tackle the sources of violence, elite groups instead benefit from the illegal processes of wealth accumulation that take place through violence.

Violence creates a climate of insecurity within society that enables elites to present undemocratic regimes as a solution while they preserve their privileged access to wealth and resources. Such is the level of fear in violent societies that this may be electorally appealing, even to less privileged sectors of society.

CSOs can encourage victims to overcome fear, and bring people together to make violence a visible, public and political issue. Evidence from forty CSOs shows how civil society activists, despite threats and, in some cases, extreme risk, can encourage awareness of rights, individual and group confidence, and public action. These are preconditions for real citizenship. The author describes how:

• Despite being forced to operate with some secrecy, civil society and the Catholic Church in Sincelejo, Colombia are monitoring and transmitting information about violence.
• With the support of the mayor, CSOs in the Colombian city of Medellín have created opportunities for citizenship-building and participatory planning processes.
• The CSO Conciudadanía supports Amor, a woman’s organisation in Antioquia, Colombia, which has stood up to insurgents and paramilitaries, and campaigned against the abuse of women and children.
• In Guatemala, the CSO Maya Kaq’la has helped Mayan women to gain self-confidence and challenge gender discrimination and racism.
• In Guatemala City, where hundreds of women have been killed, the Legal Action and Human Rights Centre is forcing elected officials to act. It is also training Guatemalan young people to be human rights observers.

Effective citizenship is the ability to exercise one’s rights in a meaningful way. Civil society needs to:

• understand, and clarify to others the difference between ‘dominating power’ and ‘power-as-potentiality’: the latter can be used to build non-violent societies
• realise that those who work in chronically-violent societies cannot build citizenship without diminishing violence itself, which otherwise will continue
• retain hope: chronic violence does not make participation impossible, even though it may limit social spaces and relationships
• realise that non-violence and non-dominating power can gradually transform other forms of indirect, structural violence, such as racism and sexism.

Source(s):
‘Violence, Power and Participation: Building Citizenship in Contexts of Chronic Violence’, IDS Working Paper 274, IDS: Brighton, by Jenny Pearce, 2007 (PDF) Full document.

Funded by: CORDAID; HIVOS; Plan Netherlands; Oxfam NOVIB, Netherlands

id21 Research Highlight: 11 May 2008

Further Information:
Jenny Pearce
International Centre for Participation Studies
Department of Peace Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
UK

Tel: +44 1274 234183
Fax: +44 1274 235240
Contact the contributor: j.v.pearce@bradford.ac.uk

International Centre for Participation Studies, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK

Other related links:
'At your service: a rights-based approach for CSOs?'

'Strengthening democracy: can CSOs help?'

'Democratisation through legal reform in Latin America – obstacles and opportunities'