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The CSS Blog features the analyses of CSS experts, entries in the CSS Mediation Perspectives series and graphics produced by the CSS, which cover a range of international relations and security-​related issues.

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Mediation Perspectives: Using Religious Resources to Teach Negotiation and Mediation Skills (Part 2): Christianity

Courtesy of jan.tito/Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Mediation Perspectives is a periodic blog entry that’s provided by the CSS’ Mediation Support Team and occasional guest authors. Each entry is designed to highlight the utility of mediation approaches in dealing with violent political conflicts. To keep up to date with the Mediation Support Team, you can sign up to their newsletter here.

The purpose of today’s blog, which is the second of a multi-part series, is to illustrate how Christian religious resources can be used to teach negotiation and mediation skills. (To learn about the broader criteria of applying these resources, see my previous blog here.) Specifically and provisionally, what I would like to focus on here is what the Bible says about the ‘when’ and ‘how’ to negotiate and mediate. The ideas that follow were inspired and tested in a workshop in 2016 organized by the Zimbabwe Peace and Security Program with the Heads of Christian Denominations (HOCD) representing the main Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical and Apostolic Christian church formations within the country.

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Mediation Perspectives: Using Religious Resources to Teach Negotiation and Mediation (Part 1): Criteria

Courtesy of jan.tito/Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Mediation Perspectives is a periodic blog entry that’s provided by the CSS’ Mediation Support Team and occasional guest authors. Each entry is designed to highlight the utility of mediation approaches in dealing with violent political conflicts. To keep up to date with the with the Mediation Support Team, you can sign up to their newsletter here.

A pastor tells a negotiation expert: “The truth will set you free!” The negotiation expert responds: “What “truth”? It all depends on your perception! And anyway, why are you telling me this; what is the interest behind your position?” One can imagine how this type of interaction could quickly degenerate into miscommunication. However, one can also take it as a starting point to reflect on how different professional communities – in the following case, religious actors and negotiation and mediation experts – can interact constructively.

The purpose of today’s blog, which is the first of a multi-part series, is to see what guiding principles can facilitate the above interaction. The blogs that will follow this one will then illustrate how mediation can be performed by different religious communities and profitably rely on religious sources, such as the Bible or the Quran, to train negotiators and mediators.

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Mediation Perspectives Blog: Applying Mediation and Negotiation Techniques at the Family Dinner

the fight scene
Courtesy of Josué Menjivar/ Flickr. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Mediation Perspectives is a periodic blog entry provided by the CSS’ Mediation Support Team and occasional guest authors. Each entry is designed to highlight the utility of mediation approaches in dealing with violent political conflicts. To keep up to date with the with the Mediation Support Team, you can sign up to their newsletter here

During 2016, our mediation perspectives blog covered a variety of topics. We wrote about avenues for Research on Mediation; we honoured deceased mediators; we considered the value of Early Warning/Early Response mechanisms; we looked at national dialogue in Colombia, and we even wrote about the role of meditation in mediation. As the new editor of the Mediation Perspectives blog series, I’d like to round up the year with a more every-day focused blog entry – which should be read with a healthy dose of humour. So, here is today’s question: How can basic mediation techniques help you to avoid fighting at your Christmas Family dinner? (For those who don’t celebrate Christmas, this question is of course applicable to a wide range of big family gatherings.)

The day is here, guests will arrive in a few hours, you’ve set up the table and the decorations, and now you want to sit down to watch a bit of TV and to relax while waiting. The smell of cooking from the kitchen is tempting, and why not pre-taste tonight’s dinner? You go to the kitchen where your wife is busy snipping and steering (Yes, “wife”; if we are honest, in most families it’s still the women who do the cooking, right?) and you help yourself to a spoonful of stew. You smile at your wife, say “just needs a bit of salt”, and walk back to the living room. Or so you thought, because she now starts screaming at you, calling you a lazy bum and threatens to throw the stew out of the window if “monsieur” doesn’t like it. You turn, look at her and say: “What? Throwing out the stew, are you crazy!”

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Mediation Perspectives: Peace in Colombia – Turning the Rejection into an Opportunity

Blog-Image-Peace-in-Col

Mediation Perspectives is a periodic blog entry provided by the CSS’ Mediation Support Team and occasional guest authors*. Each entry is designed to highlight the utility of mediation approaches in dealing with violent political conflicts. To keep up to date with the with the Mediation Support Team, you can sign up to their newsletter here.

After almost four years of tough negotiations in Cuba, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement in Cartagena on 26 September 2016 to overcome five decades of armed conflict. While celebrated “as a model for future peace negotiations around the world”, later that week Colombians rejected the accords in a referendum by a 50.2% to 49.8% margin, a difference of just 54,000 votes.

Various articles have been written on the negotiation and mediation process, and the referendum as such. This article will focus on the internal developments within Colombia’s society, with a focus on what did not go well prior to the referendum and on positive post-referendum developments.

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Mediation Perspectives: Seven Avenues for Research in International Mediation

Peter Wallensteen
Peter Wallensteen speaking at the 2016 International Conference on Mediation.

What are new avenues for research in international mediation? This question was discussed at the International Conference on Mediation, which took place in Basel, Switzerland, in June 2016. It was jointly organized by the Centre for Mediation in Africa (CMA) at the University of Pretoria, the Global South Unit for Mediation (GSUM) at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and swisspeace, which is an associated institute of the University of Basel.

The utility of the conference lay in its focus on two topics. First, trying to bridge the research–practice gap by having both mediation researchers and practitioners attend the event. Second, the conference sought to bridge the North-South gap by hosting researchers and practitioners from both the Global North and Global South, and thereby helping to rebalance the present research asymmetry that exists in the world.

By drawing on a variety of perspectives, the conference highlighted the following areas of research as being particularly relevant for the further development of the mediation field.

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