Strategic Approach To Mediation: Lessons From Ukraine

11/15/2017 10:39:44 pm

Tatiana Kyselova (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine)

Ця публікація - в наявності лише англійською мовою. 

During the last twenty years, mediation has spread around the world with an amazing speed, resulting in what was called a ‘global ADR revolution’. Furthermore, mediation has become a conventional part of the court reform projects supported by international donor organizations within democracy aid programmes in developing and transitional countries all over the world. However, twenty years of efforts to transplant mediation as a new social and legal institution into post-Soviet soil suggest the lack of a clear vision about how it can be integrated within existing societal and legal structures. In the absence of such a strategic vision, many uncoordinated and short-term interventions to institutionalize mediation so far have not resulted in desired cultural and institutional change.

As a researcher and a consultant, I have been working with local mediators and international donors in Ukraine for two decades in order to bridge the gap between perceptions coming from the Western context and the post-authoritarian reality of Ukrainian society. Having drafted ten drafts of mediation law; tried numerous schemes in business, courts, and state structures; trained more than 3000 Ukrainians in mediation skills; international donors as well as mediators have finally realized the value of a strategic approach to mediation. In this regard, on my own behalf and on behalf of the Ukrainian mediation community, I would like to express our deep thanks to Bill Marsh who served as an advisor to a number of Ukrainian projects and could have written a much better strategy but instead inspired Ukrainian mediators to develop the strategy on their own.

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