Since 1 January 2007, the law governing the criminal status of Youth (youngsters) has introduced the possibility of mediation. In Geneva, the Youth Court may delegate certain matters to mediation pursuant to a “Directive”. Such a process allows the victim and the offender to participate voluntarily and actively in the resolution of the offense or…
I recently spent a very pleasant evening chatting to a German colleague over beer and toasted marshmallows. To my surprise, she prefaced much she had to say with the comment, “but sure mediation is much more established and better developed in Ireland than here (Germany)”. I was a bit puzzled by this perception, because as…
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…
Many have tried but all have failed to implement a definitive single enforcement mechanism for cross-border mediated settlement agreements. This lack of any coherent method of enforcement is widely seen as a major impediment to further globalisation of mediation, the argument being how can we expect parties involved in large international commercial disputes to embrace…
Earlier this month, Charlie Irvine, a mediator based in Glasgow, wrote one of the best essays I’ve read in a good long while on the taboo subject of mistakes in mediation practice. He spoke eloquently of the educational role that mistakes can play in our professional development, and lamented the absence of examples of these…
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….
“Thank God for the last minute; otherwise nothing would ever happen.” This old saying rolls through my mind as I sit to type this on my iPad in the departures lounge at Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport located on the island just opposite the heart of this great city. My blog post is due at midnight…
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…
Femi, a guru at brokering transactions recently got caught with the mediation bug and decided it was a path he would like to thread in his professional sojourn. Immediately he picked up some books and read up material on mediation after which he boasted to me that given his transactional experience and acumen, mediation would…
