Bridging Worlds: Culturally Balanced Co-Mediation

Abstract

This article outlines culturally balanced co-mediation as one strategy to improve the mediation of conflicts dealing with religiously inspired political actors. Co-mediation can lead to greater acceptability because cultural proximity between a party and individual mediators is possible without threatening the overall process, content or outcome impartiality of the mediation team. Culturally balanced co-mediation is also a powerful tool in bridging cultural or religious gaps between the parties in a dispute, as the cultural proximity of the mediators to the parties allows for deeper understanding between the parties and the mediators, which in turn helps the mediators facilitate communication and understanding between the parties. If culturally balanced co-mediation is aimed at, it is important that the constellation of the co-mediation team should adequately represent the key cultural or religious differences separating the parties, but that these are not mirrored one to one. Parties tend to test any mediation team, so the distinction between tactical challenges to the impartiality of the mediation team, and genuine concerns about lack of balance has to be assessed.