Strategic Nonviolent Struggle: A Training Manual

The University for Peace, chartered by the UN General Assembly in 1980, produced this manual during expanding pro-democracy movements across Africa in the late twentieth century. It teaches techniques of strategic nonviolent action for conflict resolution and social change. The manual distinguishes between nonviolent action as moral principle versus nonviolent action as strategic method, offering frameworks for analyzing power structures and identifying leverage points where ordinary citizens can withdraw cooperation from unjust systems. It is pedagogical work: taking what activist movements had learned through practice in dozens of countries and systematizing it into teachable technique. Drawing on scholars including Gene Sharp and Erica Chenoweth, it transforms knowledge from experience into training curriculum.