The location was the Old Post House in Stafford, a traditional English, allegedly haunted, building with excellent conference facilities, good food and awful coffee. The occasion was World Conflict Resolution Day, this year on 18th October. About 45 mediators from around the world had gathered for a day of lectures on workshops on mediation. The…

Over the years, the Romanian people got used to the transition state. We are now crossing a difficult period for all of us, that of financial deprivation. People divide what they have left, dreaming to become exclusive owner of each inch of land, of each piece of wood of their old houses, of every brick…

Geoff Sharp’s recent blog posting, Biased is better and Partiality is In, challenges the conventional mediation wisdom that views impartiality and neutrality as hallmarks of the mediation process. Here impartiality refers to a disinterestedness in the outcome of the dispute and the absence of real and perceived conflicts of interest in relation to the matter….

饮水思源 – Chinese proverb meaning “When you drink water, remember its source” Many will remember 25 August 2012 as the day Neil Armstrong passed away. Neil Armstrong was a hero and an inspiration to many. He was of course the first man to walk on the moon and his achievement was symbolic to many of…

One year ago, on the 1 September 2012, The Kluwer Mediation Blog was launched with an inaugural posting by the then Minister for Justice in Slovenia, Ales Zalar. Right from the start, Ales challenged readers by offering fresh thinking about political applications of mediation: “Mediation stands for more democracy, which we all need, because it…

Mediators often talk about the power of framing their own language and reframing the language of parties and others in mediation settings. For example, mediators may frame their comments in neutral, constructive and future-focused language. They may reframe party statements to detoxify offensive or destructive language or to create a shift from the negative to…

Since I was invited to contribute to Kluwer´s Mediation Blog I decided to follow the line of writing about all the possibilities of mediation in the corporate Brazilian market. This month would not be different. I invested a lot of time chasing data and information about the uses of mediation in the Intellectual Property sector….

The first mediation course is a special moment that each of us holds in our hearts and it represents the foundation of every mediator. The transformational process that we all go through during our training as mediators is materialized by the change in our attitude towards conflict and how to solve them. When we go…

I was fortunate to have been in Belfast, Northern Ireland for the International Negotiation Competition for Law Students hosted by Queen’s University. This is a competition that is run every year where students from law schools all over the world meet to negotiate simulations where they represent clients in deal-making or dispute-resolving contexts. As part…