The name agreed upon for the new organisation was PEACE BRIGADES INTERNATIONAL.

‘We are forming an organisation with the capacity to mobilise and provide trained volunteers in areas of high tension, to avert violent outbreaks. Peace brigades, fashioned to respond to specific needs and appeals, will undertake nonpartisan missions, which may include peacemaking initiatives, peacekeeping under a discipline of nonviolence, and humanitarian service. …We are building on a rich and extensive heritage of nonviolent action. We are convinced that this commitment of mind, heart, and dedicated will can make a significant difference in human affairs’

Field work began in Nicaragua in 1983, when 10 PBI volunteers interposed themselves between US-backed Contras and the Sandinista forces in order to deter hostilities.

Later the same year, a PBI team was installed in Guatemala, focusing on protecting victims and nascent nonviolent organisations in the context of the intense state terror and repression of the Guatemalan civil war.

The protection strategy developed in the Guatemala project, consisting of the constant visible presence of foreign volunteers backed up by an international emergency response network, proved so successful that PBI began to receive many more requests for protective accompaniment from around the world.

Over the following decades, we have applied this strategy of protective accompaniment in situations of conflict and human rights abuse in El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Indonesia, Nepal, Kenya and Honduras. We have also been involved in peace initiatives that focus on supporting dialogue and reconciliation. These include a project responding to conflicts in and around Native American communities in the 1990s and participation in the Balkan Peace Team Coalition.

PBI focuses on ensuring its strategies are constantly adapted to local situations, and we open and close projects in response to changing community needs and political realities. PBI currently has field teams in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras and Kenya, and offers capacity-building support to human rights defenders in Indonesia and Nepal.