Publications Library 

2026

Night Markets: Community Partnerships for Safety

Case Study

As small businesses felt the impact from the pandemic and anti-Asian harassment surged across the U.S., NP became a key safety partner for Think!Chinatown (T!C)’s Night Markets. This case study reflects on the evolution of NP’s partnership with T!C and examines how this community partner continues to apply Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) practices. It demonstrates how direct protection practices, especially when rooted in community partnership, can foster both immediate safety and the conditions for longer-term peace.

January 2026

Youth of Sinjar: From Navigating Conflict Legacies to Leading in Peace and Social Cohesion

Case Study

In Sinjar and surrounding areas, youth-led efforts demonstrate practical peacebuilding through everyday actions. These efforts include organising community campaigns that respond to locally identified needs, such as access to electricity and community safety, while also facilitating dialogue, and advocating for dignified public life. This brief outlines key challenges that shape youth participation, highlights locally led responses, and proposes practical steps for policymakers, civil society organisations, and donors to strengthen youth leadership in peace and social cohesion. Recognising these realities is essential for advancing the Youth, Peace, and Security agenda in Ninewa in ways that are responsive to local priorities and constraints.

2026

Community-Led Analysis of Women, Peace and Security in Ninewa: Insights from Tel Afar, Sinjar, and Ba’aj

Programme Brief

Women in Iraq face structural barriers shaped by restrictive social norms, unequal access to resources, and limited participation in public and political life, with challenges amplified in conflict-affected Ninewa. This participatory analysis examines Women, Peace and Security dynamics in Tel Afar, Sinjar, and Ba'aj, drawing on focus group discussions and interviews with Women Peace Teams. Findings highlight how restrictive social norms, economic exclusion, and limited service and protection access constrain women's participation, and how community-led efforts work to address these harms.

May 2026

Drone Warfare in Iraq: Civilian and conflict impact considerations in context

White Paper

This paper takes Iraq as its focus, highlighting how fragmented authority and overlapping security arrangements and alliances interact with drone use to create distinct risks to civilians and shape possibilities for conflict mitigation and management. Iraq is not just another theatre of drone warfare, it is a structurally distinct proxy conflict space where fragmentation, hybrid actors, competing alliances, and infrastructural fragility reshape how civilians are impacted.

May 2026

Local Mechanisms of Protection: A Joint Policy Dialogue with Nonviolent Peaceforce and the Baha'i International Community (BIC)

Conference Documentation

On 23 April 2026, Nonviolent Peaceforce and the Baha’i International Community’s Addis Ababa Office brought together practitioners, researchers, and advocates to discuss the effectiveness of local protection mechanisms and the urgency of integrating them with formal institutions. This dialogue was spurred by the recognition that current protection arrangements are no longer sufficient to meet the challenges of increasingly interconnected threats. The dialogue sought to understand current local protection mechanisms, identify benchmarks for measuring progress that view protection as a collective capacity, and consider how to deepen coherence between formal institutions and local actors.

May 2026

Protecting Those Who Stay: Rethinking Duty of Care

Issue Brief

At NP, a holistic Duty of Care framework embeds physical, technical, psychosocial, and operational safety measures into the design and delivery of our work. NP’s Duty of Care approach has been shaped most clearly through experience in high-intensity conflict settings such as Ukraine. Yet, we're finding that the principles underpinning the approach are transferable across diverse operational environments. Our latest briefing explores how we are adapting the Duty of Care package across varying conflict landscapes, from Ukraine, DRC, Iraq, Myanmar, to South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and within the United States.

April 2026

Psychosocial Protection in Humanitarian Crises

Issue Brief

The physical safety and mental health of people experiencing violence are deeply intertwined. Conflict and violence generate high levels of psychological distress due to direct threats to safety and human rights. Cases abound of unaddressed trauma fueling cycles of violence or reducing capacities for civic engagement and self-protection. Effective protection efforts need to integrate responses to these mental health challenges to be sustainable, effective, and ethical.

April 2026

An Introduction to UCP

Intro

Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) is a methodology and set of practices for the direct physical protection of civilians by trained, unarmed civilians before, during, and after violent conflict. Through direct protection, UCP supports local civilians as they work to protect themselves and their communities and transform violent conflict.

April 2026

Civilian Protection Needs and Responses in Syria

This report explores civilian safety and peacebuilding needs in Syria, drawing on conversations with Syrian communities, officials, and armed actors during an exploratory mission conducted in September 2025 by Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP).

2025

Protection Trends Report 2025

Programme Brief

New report documents how contemporary conflicts are increasingly fought in civilian spaces, exposing communities to sustained violence, dangerous and cyclical displacement, widespread hunger, climate-related insecurity, conflict-related sexual violence, misinformation, and shrinking humanitarian access. Drawing on frontline reporting and close engagement with affected communities, the report highlights both the erosion of formal protection systems and the growing sense of abandonment felt by civilians. At the same time, it underscores that, even under extreme constraint, civilians continue to act with agency to protect themselves and one another — reinforcing the urgent need for preventive, civilian-led, and nonviolent protection approaches grounded in long-term presence and trust.