Mediation practice
Power-sharing, transitional governments and the role of mediation
Power-sharing transitional governments are common ingredients of peacemaking and peacebuilding efforts. This paper focuses on the sharing of power in the transitional executive and legislature, and argues that the international community has an important role to play in assisting power-sharing governments to manage their countries’ political transition.
It ain’t over ’til it’s over: what role for mediation in post-agreement contexts?
International mediation is conventionally treated as the reserve of peace processes which, once culminating in a peace agreement, are expected to progress to implementation and various forms of post-conflict recovery in which mediation would have little or no part. Many have criticised the degree to which mediators focus on getting a deal and getting out, leaving the messy business of implementing those deals to others, at least until the deals fray or come apart, requiring new rounds of mediation.
This paper examines whether there may also be a role for mediation-like efforts in relation to post-agreement dialogue processes or similar efforts to broaden popular support for a settlement.
Gender sensitivity: nicety or necessity in peace process management?
This paper offers examples of how issues in peace processes can be treated in a gender- sensitive manner, an exercise that is surprisingly simple yet can yield rich analytical results. The arguments in this paper are based principally on the practical experience of professionals currently or recently involved in the management of peace processes in Aceh, Kenya, Kosovo, Liberia, the Middle East, Nepal, Northern Ireland, the Sudan/Darfur and Uganda, together with some secondary academic research and analysis. This paper explores what peace-process actors, including mediators, have done to make peace processes more sensitive to gender, what else might be done, and the benefits (and costs, if any) of such strategies.
Negotiating with groups that use terrorism: Lessons for policy-makers
Do negotiations help to end violent terrorist campaigns? An overview of recent efforts in this regard reveals that idealistic platitudes are as misguided as righteous exhortations about the evils of terrorism.
A mediator's view from here
Vision, strategy and other elements of peacemaking
Under the Acacia: Mediation and the dilemma of inclusion
Fostering peace through mediation involves a number of complex and important challenges. A key aspect of any mediation process is the inclusion of primary and secondary actors. This paper examines indigenous approaches to mediation and assesses how they address the issue of inclusion. It discusses examples of indigenous mediation from the Tiv community in Nigeria, the guurti system in Somaliland and the application of ubuntu to mediation and reconciliation found predominantly in Southern Africa. It argues that official mediation processes limit the number of interlocutors in order to protect a process and encourage expediency, but as a result, undermine their own legitimacy. In contrast, indigenous processes are more inclusive, but tend to be slow in bringing about agreement. In its final section, the paper proposes a possible ‘‘hybrid approach', which might incorporate elements from indigenous and official processes to create greater thresholds of inclusion while maintaining important efficiencies.
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The views expressed in papers posted on this website are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the HD Centre.