Mediation is a negotiation facilitated by a third-party neutral. It is a structured, interactive process where an impartial third party, the mediator, assists disputing parties in resolving conflict through the use of specialized communication and negotiation techniques. All participants in mediation are encouraged to actively participate in the process. Mediation is a "party-centered" process in that it is focused primarily upon the needs, rights, and interests of the parties. The mediator uses a wide variety of techniques to guide the process in a constructive direction and to help the parties find their optimal solution. A mediator is facilitative in that they manage the interaction between parties and facilitates open communication. Mediation is also evaluative in that the mediator analyzes issues and relevant norms ("reality-testing"), while refraining from providing prescriptive advice to the parties. Due to its voluntary nature, a person cannot be compelled to use mediation to resolve their dispute. However, a suggestion from the Court may be difficult to resist.
North Catasauqua is a borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The borough was founded in 1907. The population of North Catasauqua was 2,971 at the 2020 census. The borough is part of the Lehigh Valley metropolitan area, which had a population of 861,899 and was the 68th-most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. as of the 2020 census.
Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of conflict and retribution. Committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information about their conflicting motives or ideologies to the rest of group and by engaging in collective negotiation. Dimensions of resolution typically parallel the dimensions of conflict in the way the conflict is processed. Cognitive resolution is the way disputants understand and view the conflict, with beliefs, perspectives, understandings and attitudes. Emotional resolution is in the way disputants feel about a conflict, the emotional energy. Behavioral resolution is reflective of how the disputants act, their behavior. Ultimately a wide range of methods and procedures for addressing conflict exist, including negotiation, mediation, mediation-arbitration, diplomacy, and creative peacebuilding.
A ceasefire, also spelled cease fire, is a stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions, often due to mediation by a third party. Ceasefires may be between state actors or involve non-state actors.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), founded in 1947, is an independent agency of the United States government, and the nation's largest public agency for dispute resolution and conflict management, providing mediation services and related conflict prevention and resolution services in the private, public, and federal sectors. FMCS is tasked with mediating labor disputes around the country; it provides training and relationship development programs for management and unions as part of its role in promoting labor-management peace and cooperation. The Agency also provides mediation, conflict prevention, and conflict management services outside the labor context for federal agencies and the programs they operate. The FMCS headquarters is located in Washington, D.C., with other offices across the country.
Peace and conflict studies or conflict analysis and resolution is a social science field that identifies and analyzes violent and nonviolent behaviors as well as the structural mechanisms attending conflicts, with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. A variation on this, peace studies (irenology), is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, thereby seeking "victory" for all parties involved in the conflict.
John Paul Lederach is an American Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, and concurrently Distinguished Scholar at Eastern Mennonite University. He has written widely on conflict resolution and mediation. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado. In 1994 he became the founding director for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University where he was a professor. He currently works for the foundation Humanity United.
Peace education is the process of acquiring values, knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors to live in harmony with oneself, others, and the natural environment.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians until 2023, and seven surrounding districts, inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis until their expulsion during the 1990s. The Nagorno-Karabakh region was entirely claimed by and partially controlled by the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, but was recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan gradually re-established control over Nagorno-Karabakh region and the seven surrounding districts.
Alexander William Lowndes de Waal, a British researcher on African elite politics, is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Previously, he was a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, as well as program director at the Social Science Research Council on AIDS in New York City.
The 2008 Mardakert clashes began on March 4 after the 2008 Armenian election protests. It involved the heaviest fighting between ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh since the 1994 ceasefire after the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Ahmed Abukhater is an architect, environmental scientist, and an urban and regional planner by trade. He is an author, powerlifter, and the first athlete to represent Palestine at the World Association of Bench Pressers and Dead lifters (WABDL) World Powerlifting Championships in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2006.
Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, is a social scientist, internationally recognized mediator, facilitator and trainer, as well as a scholar-practitioner and educator with close to twenty years of experience in the field of conflict analysis and resolution, research and applied practice, peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and transformation. Since 2005, she has been the President and Managing Director of Kommon Denominator Inc., a private consulting firm.
The Tehran Communiqué, also known as the Joint statement of the heads of state in Tehran is the joint communiqué mediated by Iranian President, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and signed by the acting President of Azerbaijan, Yagub Mammadov and President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian on May 7, 1992 with an intention to end the four-year-long hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a former autonomous oblast of the Azerbaijan SSR.
The Erdut Agreement, officially the Basic Agreement on the Region of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium, is an agreement reached on 12 November 1995 between the authorities of the Republic of Croatia and the local Serb authorities of the Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia region on the peaceful resolution to the Croatian War of Independence in eastern Croatia. It effectively ended the ethno-nationalist conflict in the region and initiated the process of peaceful reintegration of the region to central government control. The reintegration was directly implemented by the United Nations. The agreement provided a set of guarantees on human and minority rights as well as on the refugee return. It was named after Erdut, the village in which it was signed by local Serb representatives.
The political status of Nagorno-Karabakh remained unresolved from its declaration of independence on 10 December 1991 to its September 2023 collapse. During Soviet times, it had been an ethnic Armenian autonomous oblast of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a conflict arose between local Armenians who sought to have Nagorno-Karabakh join Armenia and local Azerbaijanis who opposed this.
The two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict proposes to resolve the conflict by establishing two nation states in former Mandatory Palestine. The implementation of a two-state solution would involve the establishment of an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel.
Peter Thomas Coleman is a social psychologist and researcher in the field of conflict resolution and sustainable peace. Coleman is best known for his work on intractable conflicts and applying complexity science.
Peacebuilding in Jammu and Kashmir includes confidence-building measures at a nation-state level between the governments of India and Pakistan, track two diplomacy, as well as initiatives by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), institutes and individuals. The purpose of peacebuilding in Jammu and Kashmir include conflict prevention and reduction of hostilities in the Kashmir Valley. Many countries such as Russia, United States and China have also played a de-escalatory role with regard to tensions in the region.
David Alan Hoffman is an American attorney, mediator, arbitrator, author, and academic. He is the John H. Watson, Jr. Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. He is also the founder of Boston Law Collaborative. His TEDx talk on Lawyers as Peacemakers describes his decision to discontinue courtroom advocacy and focus exclusively on mediation, arbitration, and Collaborative law.
