Within the scope of the Nonviolent Campaigning for Rights Defenders Project, which we run as the Nonviolence Education and Research Association and supported by the German Consulate, we carried out a series of activities to empower rights defenders in nonviolent campaign planning.
In order to increase the nonviolent campaign planning skills and capacities of rights defender organisations and activists, we conducted two face-to-face trainings lasting five full days. In these trainings, which we held with 35 rights defenders in September and December; mostly people from the field of LGBTI+ and women’s rights participated. The training programme included topics such as nonviolent campaign, strategic planing, swot analysis, problem analysis, risk planning, goal setting, nonviolent action and tactics, communication and evaluation of the campaign and inclusive decision making and meeting facilitation for the campaign planning process.
In order to show what a nonviolent campaign is in a short and understandable way, we prepared the Handbook on Nonviolent Campaigning for Social Change, which rights defenders can refer to when planning a nonviolent campaign. 55 guests attended the event we organised during the Human Rights Week to promote the book. During the event, Emel Türker Alpay shared the purpose and content of the handbook and climate activist Ege Tok shared her experiences of nonviolent campaigning in Turkey.
