The 2023 Institutions for Conflict Resolution (COI) Conference: Towards Just Institutional Approaches to Conflict Prevention and Resolution was held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on 28-29 September 2023.
IMI Executive Director Ivana Ninčić Österle participated together with IMI Ethics Committee Chair Dr. Omer Shapira and IMI Appraisal Committee Member Dr. Orsolya Tokaji-Nagy, Lecturer in European Business Law Coordinator of the Professional Advisory Committee for EU Law, Hague University of Applied Sciences, within a panel on “International mediation: credentials and ethics”.
Professionalization of mediation is about standard-setting for credentialling, as well as about setting ethical standards from mediation practice and ensuring compliance with them. The panel examined the institutional collaborations needed to establish the competency and other bases for effective and high-quality mediation to be more readily available and accessible, especially in the cross-border context. The panelists, each from their own vantage points, advocated for public-private models offering mechanisms for overcoming structural barriers that have inhibited the effective regulation, and uptake, of mediation.
Omer Shapira took a deep dive into mediation ethics and practice standards, exploring how ethical guidelines and codes of conduct are essential for ensuring the effectiveness and fairness of mediation as an institution for preventing and resolving conflicts. His presentation specifically focused on the role of non-governmental actors, such as community mediation centres in Israel and the International Mediation Institute, in developing and implementing codes of ethics that promote just and trustworthy conflict resolution in both national and international contexts. For more information, please see here.
Within a further panel on mediation, chaired by Marc Simon Thomas, Amber Boes presented her research on shareholder disputes, and Emma van Gelder on online mediation experiences of Netherlands family mediators. Barbara Warwas presented her paper on ‘Community trust building and peer mediation practices for people-centred justice: the case of Trust Mediators’ Toolkit’. She addressed topics like educational research, people-centred justice, student-led citizen science, peer-mediation and sociological approaches to the rule of law. Angela Felicetti and Carolina Mancuso presented various instruments recently employed in Italian Academia to disseminate a culture of mediation, including the analysis of innovative teaching and research practices, as well as dispute resolution mechanisms currently offered by institutional figures within Italian universities.
In a captivating keynote, Tom Tyler PhD, Professor, Yale University presented ‘Procedural Approaches to Conflict Management‘, emphasizing the importance of the process and the need to design institutions to create procedures that people can understand and experience as fair. The conference concluded with stimulating debates about possible future directions that institutions for conflict resolution should take to deal effectively with environmental problems. For more, please see here.
Empirical Research into Institutions for conflict resolution (ERI) conducts research on conflict-resolving institutions within a changing rule of law. In doing so, they conduct both ‘classical’ legal research as well as empirical research. The “Institutions for Conflict Resolution Network” started in 2019 with conflict resolution experts from Leiden University, Utrecht University and the Radboud University in the Netherlands, but is open to the wider world. Please see more here.
Rebecca Sandefur, ‘Regulating Law for Just Solutions’
