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IMPACT OF MEDIATION ON INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
The international environment in 2019 was facing several conflicts that were started and stimulated by different parties for various reasons. Such conflicts had endangered the lives and distorted economics of the places from where it occurred. Many countries like Venezuela, Palestine, Indonesia, Sudan, Syria, Iran, and China vs. The United States started to face conflicts. Many people had lost their lives in most of these countries apart from China-USA, since it’s a trade war, while others decided to seek refuge in neighboring areas due to the hostile conditions that are inhabitable. For the same matter the international communities, which are led by the United Nations, focused on ensuring peaceful coexistence and interaction in such areas through the process of mediation.
Strategies in Mediation:
The certain challenge in the conflict resolution had defined the most suitable and sufficient mediation process. However, the identification of the best mediation stood as a nightmare since it was unpredictable to account for varying directions that the conflicts could take. The strategies that include procedural, communicative, directive, apolitical, and preventive had been applied in the attempt to solve the conflicts in the world. In the case of the procedural strategy, the peacemaker regulates the timing, venues, and agenda dispatches information, and looks into the formality of the meeting.
In the case of the communicative technique, the mediator requires to advance and focus on fostering communication and cooperatively in the most positive way possible. During the break out in Kenya in 2007-08 elections of the Post-Election Violence, the body was commissioned with major players coming from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation with the late former UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan being the chairperson. This happened because the parties were led to agree on a coalition government hence peace.
In the directive approach, the peacemaker strives to influence the content and final decision of the negotiation. The mediator may even threaten to employ practices like diplomatic sanctions and aids to the country.
The preventive diplomacy helps the mediators to avoid any sort of conflict from arising or escalating into a conflict between disputants and prevent the spread of fights that might occur. The strategy had been very handy during the China trade war, the Russia-US disputes, and the North Korea-US conflict.
Lastly, the apolitical strategy is for the non-profit and private organizations like the International Crisis Group to participate in the resolution of international conflicts through analyzing, researching, and advocating for conflict resolution.
Challenges of Mediation:
The number of conflicts had tripled and the end of the cold war thus increased the fatalities and victims of dispute and wars in the world. Almost over 65 million had been displaced due to the conflicts in the region of Syria and had displaced more than half of its population around 6.5 million people. This brought an increase to the need and urgency of the mediation and persuaded the UN to focus on various measures to prevent future wars in the other regions while they attempted to solve the existing ones.
The nature of the conflict also posed a challenge in the mediation process given the issues which were state fragility, confusing lines among political and criminal, and ideological interests like the one in Syria where ISIS is against the government and the government humiliates its citizens. Also, the complexities that followed because of the US-China trade war and unclear objectives of the increased armed groups were challenges in mediation. Even the disputes arising out of the situations of regionalization and the internalization hindered the mediation.
- International conflict
- Trade war
- International committees
