Introduction to Nonviolent Conflict

Nonviolence is a philosophical and strategic approach to resolving conflicts and overcoming injustice without using physical force. It rejects violence as a method and relies instead on protest, resistance, and persuasion.

People adopt nonviolence for two main reasons.

• Principled nonviolence stems from a moral conviction that violence is wrong. It is often grounded in religious or ethical beliefs that promote compassion and respect for human life, and its supporters believe that the ends do not justify violent means.
• Strategic nonviolence (sometimes called pragmatic nonviolence) argues that methods such as civil disobedience, noncooperation, and peaceful protest are more effective than violence at achieving political and social goals. They can attract allies, shift public opinion, and disrupt the systems that keep an opponent in power.

Many people and movements combine the two. Martin Luther King Jr., for example, was committed to nonviolence both as a moral principle and as a strategy.

Nonviolence involves active resistance through methods such as strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, and civil disobedience, which put pressure on opponents without using physical violence. These methods are explored in more detail on the next page.

Where Does Nonviolence End?

Exactly where nonviolence ends is itself contested. Erica Chenoweth (2021), one of the leading researchers in the field, describes civil resistance as "a method of active conflict in which unarmed people use a variety of coordinated, noninstitutional methods," such as strikes, protests, and boycotts, without directly harming or threatening to harm their opponents. However, this leaves some actions open to debate.

Property damage is the most common example. Some activists argue that destroying property is nonviolent because no person is harmed. Others argue that it can threaten people, alienate potential supporters, and give governments a reason to use force. The Kings Bay Plowshares 7, for example, damaged property at a US naval base in 2018 but described their action as nonviolent.

Self-defence raises a similar question. If protesters are attacked by police or by armed supporters of a government and fight back to protect themselves, is their movement still nonviolent? During the 2011 uprising in Egypt, for example, protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square defended themselves with rocks and barricades when men loyal to President Hosni Mubarak attacked them, yet the uprising is widely described as a nonviolent revolution. Pacifists also disagree on this matter. Anti-war pacifists accept violence in immediate self-defence, but nonviolent pacifists do not.

How nonviolence is defined affects which movements are counted as nonviolent. Researchers such as Chenoweth (2021) usually classify a campaign by its main methods, so a largely nonviolent movement where some people fight back may be counted as nonviolent. This is important when researchers compare the success of nonviolent and violent campaigns. That research is explored on the next page.

Nonviolence and Pacifism

Pacifism and nonviolence are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings, and scholars still disagree about the distinction.

Pacifism is usually understood more narrowly as opposition to war and armed conflict. The word comes from the Latin pacificus, meaning "peace-making," and many pacifists see their position as a commitment to building peace as well as opposing war. Nonviolence is a broader term. It refers to a rejection of violence as a means to an end in any situation, whether for moral, religious, or strategic reasons, and it is usually associated with challenging injustice.

In practice, the two often overlap. Many people in protest movements and resistance campaigns use nonviolent methods without being pacifists, because they believe nonviolence is the most effective way to challenge injustice.

Both traditions have been shaped by religious and secular thinkers. Gandhi and King grounded their nonviolent resistance in religious and ethical beliefs about loving one's opponents.

Others oppose war on secular moral grounds. War Resisters' International, for example, is a network of pacifist groups with no religious basis, and since 2022 it has campaigned for the protection of conscientious objectors from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Mahatma Gandhi and Nonviolent Resistance

Gandhi's approach to nonviolence was grounded in ahimsa, the principle of not harming any living thing, which is shared by Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions. For Gandhi, ahimsa required active work for the well-being of others, even when that work brought suffering to the person doing it.

Gandhi combined ahimsa with satyagraha, a term he created in South Africa in the early 1900s from the Sanskrit words for truth (satya) and holding firmly (agraha). Satyagraha is often translated as "truth force" or "soul force." It describes a way of resisting injustice by holding firmly to the truth and refusing to cooperate with wrongdoing, without harming one's opponent.

Gandhi argued that violence builds resentment and hatred, which can lay the foundations for further injustice. He also believed that people who use violence to achieve political goals can end up justifying almost any means of reaching them.

Gandhi's supporters were prepared to confront the authorities, but without violence. Their methods included marches, boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience, fasts, mass arrests, and refusing to pay taxes. Gandhi believed it took far more strength to be beaten by the authorities and respond with courage and restraint than to throw a punch or use a gun. The Salt March of 1930, in which Gandhi and his followers walked about 390 kilometres to the sea to make salt in defiance of a British tax, is one of the best-known examples.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance

King described his "pilgrimage to nonviolence" in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom (1958). He wrote that true pacifism, or nonviolent resistance, is "a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love" (King, 1958). King was committed to nonviolence both morally and practically (as a principle and as a strategy).

Leading nonviolent campaigns convinced King that nonviolence could be a way of life as well as a tactic. He later described Gandhi as the "guiding light" of the movement's technique of nonviolent social change (King, 1959), and he explained that Christ provided the spirit and motivation while Gandhi provided the method (King, 1958).

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University summarizes King's approach in six principles, drawn from Stride Toward Freedom (King, 1958).

1. Nonviolence is a way of resisting evil, not avoiding it.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win the "friendship and understanding" of the opponent, not to humiliate them.
3. Nonviolence opposes evil itself, not the people who commit evil acts.
4. Those who practice nonviolence must be willing to accept suffering without retaliating, because suffering can be redemptive.
5. Nonviolence avoids both physical violence and "internal violence of spirit." The nonviolent resister refuses to hate the opponent, as well as to harm them.
6. Nonviolence rests on a "deep faith in the future" and the belief that the universe is on the side of justice.

In the Letter from Birmingham Jail, King explained why direct action was necessary and why breaking unjust laws could be justified. As you read the following excerpts, notice how active this form of nonviolence is, compared with the passive version that its critics sometimes describe.

You may well ask, "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc? Isn’t negotiation a better path?" You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking, But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood…

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all.”

In the following video, King explains his reasons for a nonviolent approach to conflict. Watch it and answer the questions below.

Guiding Questions

1. Identify the three approaches to oppression that King outlines.
2. Distinguish between passive resistance and nonviolent resistance, as King describes them.

Pacifists share an opposition to violence, but they differ on how far that opposition extends and how it should be applied. The main approaches are outlined below.

Conscientious Objection

Beyond protesting against militarism, some pacifists will not take part in war themselves. This is known as conscientious objection, refusing military service on moral, religious, or philosophical grounds. Some conscientious objectors also refuse to pay the portion of their taxes that would fund the military. In the past, conscientious objectors have faced imprisonment and even execution, and many still face prison today. In December 2023, for example, Tal Mitnick, an 18-year-old Israeli, was jailed for refusing military service during the war in Gaza. However, some states allow conscientious objectors to perform civilian service instead.

Pacifist groups mark International Conscientious Objectors' Day each year on May 15. At the United Nations, the Human Rights Council has recognized conscientious objection to military service as part of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, most recently in a resolution adopted in October 2022.

Conscientious objectors put pacifist principles into practice, often at great personal cost.

Critics of Pacifism

Critics argue that pacifism and nonviolence are unrealistic when it comes to complex global conflicts. They contend that while these ideas may sound good in theory, states and groups sometimes need to use force to protect themselves or resolve disputes.

Pacifists are also sometimes described as "free riders," who avoid the moral dilemmas of war while benefiting from the security provided by militaries and by others' willingness to fight.

Furthermore, some argue that avoiding killing should not always come first. In some situations, they argue, justice, freedom, and human rights may be worth fighting or even dying for, and violence may be justified to protect people from serious harm. This reasoning is often used to justify humanitarian intervention, where the costs of using force are weighed against the need to prevent atrocities.

Malcolm X's rejection of nonviolence is examined on the next page, as part of the debate about the legitimacy of violent protest.

If you would like to explore the ideas, theories, or cases on this page in more depth for your Extended Essay, Engagement Project, or HL Extension, the full references for the sources cited are listed below.

Chenoweth, E. (2021). Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gandhi, M. K. (1935, July 20).Harijan, 180–181.

King, M. L. (1958).Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. New York: Harper & Brothers.

King, M. L. (1959). My Trip to the Land of Gandhi. Ebony, July, 84–92.

King, M. L. (1963).Letter from Birmingham Jail. Birmingham, AL.

King, M. L. (1964). Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech. Oslo: The Nobel Foundation.

King, M. L. (1967). Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? New York: Harper & Row.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Nonviolence. Stanford University.