Abstract
<p>Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) is practised across the world by communities and civilians protecting other civilians from direct violence, without the use or threat of weapons. Using nonviolence, strong relationships and proactive presence, they accompany people and create safer spaces for civilians living amid violence. UCP demonstrates that civilians can protect other civilians from violence without the use of weapons, challenging the assumption that armed actors only yield to violence. In demonstrating that armed actors change their behaviour without the threat of violence, UCP subverts the dominant narratives and paradigms in which protection depends on the strong protecting the weak, and that where there is violence you need soldiers. When we accept that UCP works, there are wider implications for what we know about the capacity of communities, the potential for protection and the breaking of cycles of violence. These insights provide us with new models for how people become safer. Transforming protection by accepting a wider range of approaches and the efficacy of nonviolence will improve the protection of civilians and provide the potential for protection to contribute to a wider transformational change that could reduce the influence of the systems that generate protection threats to civilians.</p>