Mediation is a change process whose impact can be felt at different levels of society, measured across time and evaluated from different stakeholders' point of view. For this reason mediators should take an expansive view of success, beyond just the signing of an agreement. The indicators described below should be seen as inter-dependent variables that can help demonstrate a measurable impact on the peace process.

Modeling collaboration in your process design

Picture: Imam Ashafa and Pastor James

In this adversarial world of power politics, collaborative peace-making processes are emerging as providing surprisingly sustainable outcomes. Unlike power negotiations, participatory mediation is based on the premise that differing worldviews are able to co-exist peacefully and that solutions that meet both sides’ needs can be created by the parties.

The following are statistics about the use of mediation, its impact on crisis management and long-term tension reduction, and the effectiveness of various mediation styles and organizations. This is by no means a literature review but just a few numbers I found interesting.

Please feel free to respond by sharing the statistics you’ve found in your research, of course including appropriate references so sources can be verified.

The literature has focused a great deal on trying to identify the right or “ripe” moment to initiate negotiations between belligerent parties, but in their article “Ready for Prime Time: The When, Who, and Why of International Mediation,” Chester Crocker, et al [1], discuss the readiness of the mediator for the task-at-hand. They discuss 3 dimensions of mediator ripeness for leading an official peace process:

Protracted conflicts are some of the most resistant to third-party interventions. These are conflicts that have withstood the test of time. The dehumanization of the “other” becomes part of the belligerents’ identity and parties lock their positions around solutions that are perceived to be incompatible.  Over time, leaders get hooked on resources and power which takes primacy over the root causes of the conflict.