* European Coordinator of Nonviolent Peaceforce
Rachel Julian is the European Coordinator of Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), a Minnesota-based nongovernmental organization founded in 2001 by Mel Duncan and David Hartsough. A member organization of the United for Peace and Justice radical anti-war coalition, NP states that its mission is “to build a trained, international civilian nonviolent peace force” that “will be sent to conflict areas to prevent death and destruction and protect human rights, thus creating the space for local groups to struggle nonviolently, enter into dialogue, and seek peaceful resolution.” Members of this unarmed peace force would enter nations by which they are invited to help nonviolent factions therein perform acts of civil disobedience and disrupt military actions. The group’s first campaign was an unsuccessful effort to end civil tensions in Sri Lanka.
Member organizations of the NP include several anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian militant organizations such as Pax Christi-U.S.A., the International Peace Bureau, the Holy Land Trust, the Palestinian Center for Rapproachement Between People, the International Solidarity Movement, and Grassroots International.
In July 2002, Rachel Julian, who works in NP’s Brussels office, explained that her organization planned to achieve its objectives by “chang[ing] the attitude and/or the behavior of one or all of the conflict parties (e.g. by conflict resolution workshops or by sanctions against a government)”; “chang[ing] the means by which the conflict is carried out (e.g. by giving training in nonviolent resistance techniques)”; and “protect[ing] human rights” (e.g. by building international public pressure like Amnesty International does).