Suchergebnisse

Im November 2017 beginnt die ETH Zürich den ersten Zyklus eines neuen Master of Advanced Studies ETH Mediation in Friedensprozessen (MAS ETH MPP). Das Programm hat die Vision, zu einer friedlichen und sicheren Welt beizutragen, indem es künftige Mediatoren mit dem Wissen und Fähigkeiten versorgt, um in gewalttätigen politischen Konflikten effektiv zu vermitteln. ; ISSN:1024-0608

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.

The goal of this handbook is to enhance the practice of mediation by showing how lessons from individual mediators can be identified and made available both to their home organization (e.g., a foreign ministry, intergovernmental organization, or nongovernmental organization) and to a wider practitioner audience. More particularly, the handbook gives guidance to staff debriefing mediators who are or have been directly involved in peace negotiations. The focus here is not on self-assessments by the mediators themselves, nor on evaluations of the mediator's performance by external donors, nor on political or psychological debriefing. Instead, this handbook examines methodological debriefing: that is, interviews conducted with the goal of learning lessons about the mediation method from the experience of a specific mediator that are useful for future mediation processes. Methodological debriefing is typically conducted by individuals who have not been directly involved in the mediator's work and who do not seek to judge it but who want to learn the mediator's perspective on what was done and why it was done. Ideally, the mediator will also benefit from the interview by discovering something new through the questions posed, by having the opportunity to recount a challenging experience, or at least by having her or his experiences documented in a structured and objective manner.

Over the last few years, tensions have arisen over the cultural, religious, and physical "space" of Islam in Europe. This article explores how governments deal with such debates by examining the "Face of Mohammed" cartoon crisis in Denmark, the "Fitna" film in Holland, and the ban on minaret construction in Switzerland. The analysis shows how the tensions tend to decrease when governments create opportunities for actors to discuss their fears, hopes, and values. In contrast, tensions tend to escalate if governments are closely associated with the parties who are politicizing Islam, if basic values are invoked, and if only legal means are used to deal with differences. The cultural diversity of Europe is likely to persist, if not increase. Therefore, greater efforts are needed to find ways of dealing with differences in a constructive manner. Mediative approaches can help to deescalate tensions while respecting the core values and identities of the involved actors.

Mediation is a mystery. Some peace processes are successful, some are dismal failures, and most are a bit of both. The transition of a society from war to peace is extremely complex and difficult. The aim of this study is to partially "unpack" the mystery of mediation, in order to learn about the use of mediation in African peace processes during the last decade. The study analyzes 11 cases of mediation work in diverse conflict situations, with various parties and mediators, offering insights into the nuts and bolts of mediation in African peace processes.

This article focuses on the dilemmas and trade-offs that third parties face when mediating violent political conflicts. Should they ignore human rights violations because pushing the issue could jeopardize relationships with political actors who grant access for humanitarian aid? Will bringing moderates and hardliners together help the peace process or radicalize moderate actors? What should dialogue facilitators do when the act of identifying non-mainstream groups to be included into dialogue increases division and polarization? The activity of peacemaking is inherently characterized by such process and strategy dilemmas where two equally compulsory imperatives seem not to be attainable at the same time. The article proposes a framework to break out of either-or thinking in these situations. We argue that: 1) making oneself aware of how a decision is perceived, and 2) systematically exploring a set of different strategies for creating new unexpected options helps to ease these decisions and avoid rotten compromises. The model reworks and combines existing problemsolving strategies to create a new explorative option generation approach to peacemaking dilemmas and trade-offs. Some of these strategies, such as sequencing and incrementalization, are already well-established in peacemaking. Others, such as compartmentalization and utilization, are rather unconsciously used. All identified strategies, however, are not yet systematically employed to manage third parties' own dilemmas and trade-offs. Under the suggested framework, these strategies can act in complement to synthesize creativity and strategic thinking with surprising ease. Using examples from the authors' peacemaking activities and observations in Myanmar, Thailand, and Ukraine, the article demonstrates the real-world benefits of the framework in terms of decision assessment and optional thinking.

Die Ausgabe 2017 des CSS-Jahrbuchs "Bulletin zur schweizerischen Sicherheitspolitik" enthält Kapitel zu den Beiträgen der Schweizer Muslimgemeinschaft zu PVE (Darius Farman und Fabien Merz), die Ausbreitung von dschihadistischem Salafismus in Libyen, Marokko und Tunesien (Lisa Watanabe), Organisierte Kriminalität in fragilen Kontexten als Herausforderung für die Schweizer Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (Benno Zogg) sowie über die Gesundheitsaussenpolitik der Schweiz (Ursula Jasper). Es enthält auch ein Interview mit Guy Parmelin, Bundesrat und Chef des VBS. Des Weiteren werden der erstmals im November 2017 an der ETH Zürich angebotene "Master of Advanced Studies ETH Mediation in Peace Processes" (Simon Mason und Andreas Wenger) und die städtische Sicherheit in einer sich wandelnden Risikolandschaft (Linda Maduz und Florian Roth) thematisiert. ; ISSN:1024-0608