Peace Brigades International: Roots and Early Years

Mahatma Gandhi first spoke of a peace brigade, or shanti sena, in 1922, during Hindu-Muslim rioting in India. Since then many people have become interested in the idea of nonviolent intervention in conflict by contingents of trained nonpartisans, as well as massive nonviolent action by partisans as an alternative to armed conflict, and some have taken concrete action on those ideas. Peace Brigades International was founded in 1981 by a group of eleven peace activists, including Narayan Desai whose father was Gandhi's personal secretary, Charles Walker, a Quaker veteran of the World Peace Brigade of the 1960s, Jaime de Jesus Diaz, a Catholic priest from Bogota, Colombia, and Ray Magee of the California-based Peaceworkers organization. Since then, the new organization has been providing nonviolent international accompaniment to human rights workers in a variety of countries where civil wars and repression have been present, and has developed an international network of support for those working for peace and justice within their own countries. This book by PBI's first International Secretary tells the story of the roots and early years of PBI, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.