Mediation for the Twenty First Century

Rationale: Upon taking office, the new Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) indicated that his priority for his term of office would be developing UN capacity for mediation and conflict prevention. New mediation, framed as conflict prevention, needs to be concerned not only with ending violence but with re-building fractured societies and creating the conditions that will prevent conflict from recurring. It is agreed that a greater range of participants should be involved in the mediation process but there remains a lack of experience as to how to ensure meaningful input. 

Project aims: This project seeks to deconstruct the dominant security paradigms within which international mediation operates to reveal the limitations that these paradigms impose on thinking in the field. In so doing it aims to address a gap in the theory and practice of mediation by articulating a new concept of mediation that moves beyond evaluation of compliance with policy to interrogate what mediation seeks to achieve. It will do this through collaboration with mediation practitioners and policy makers to bring together conceptual, doctrinal and practical perspectives on how to begin to reconstruct the field from the ground up.

Fellows: 

• Ms Martine Miller, Vice President at the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, Washington D.C
• Ms Irene Fellin, Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI)
• Ms Johanna Poutanen, Crisis Management Initiative (CMI).