The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) is a nonprofit educational foundation, founded by Jack DuVall and Peter Ackerman in 2002.
[1] It promotes the study and utilization of nonmilitary strategies by civilian-based movements to establish and defend human rights, social justice and democracy.
[1] In raising public awareness of the history and ideas of nonviolent conflict in both democratic and autocratic societies, ICNC has disseminated books, articles, broadcast media, video programming, computer games and other learning materials.
ICNC also maintains a strictly apolitical posture, in that it works with groups challenging autocratic governments regardless of a given regime's ideological orientation or relations with the United States.
[13] ICNC and the Atlantic Council launched joint project Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave to "catalyze support for nonviolent pro-democracy movements fighting against authoritarian rule.
[16][17] Due to the political nature of many of the problems facing ordinary people worldwide—authoritarianism, social injustices, human rights violations, disregard for the climate, and more—ICNC has received criticism for its work to educate activists in nonviolent civil resistance.
One example is pro-Chavez American-Venezuelan lawyer Eva Golinger who alleged that during 2005 and 2006, ICNC trained Venezuelan youths to try to reverse the government of Hugo Chávez, through "[impeding] the electoral process and [creating] a scenario of fraud,"[18] claiming that ICNC did this together with USAID and NED as part of a systemic plan of implementing United States foreign policy aims in democratic countries.