Mel Duncan

Melvin Earl Duncan (born May 22, 1950 in Davenport, Iowa) is the founding Executive Director of Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), a civilian peacekeeping organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.

His volunteer activities have included service as a peacekeeper on the border of Nicaragua during the Contra war, delivering medical supplies to Iraq, and working for the election of US Senator Paul Wellstone in 1990.

The two began laying the groundwork for an international non-governmental organization to put nonviolent strategies into practice for the prevention and mitigation of violence in conflict zones.

Based on Mohandas Gandhi's concept of a Shanti Sena or "peace army," the model involves the use of trained, unarmed civilian peacekeepers working with local groups to create space for nonviolent conflict resolution.

[3] Nonviolent Peaceforce was inaugurated in 2002 with Duncan as Executive Director and has since conducted civilian peacekeeping operations in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Guatemala and Sudan.