Transformative mediation, intersectionality and gender Justice: outlining a productive research agenda?
How do we make peace mediation more inclusive, not only of women but also of other minoritized groups that have been traditionally ignored in mainstream responses to conflict?
How do we ensure that their experiential knowledges and values matter for transforming conflictual relations and addressing legacies of conflict?
Where do we see interventions in academic and activist spaces that can help us re-imagine mediation through a commitment to intersectionality and gender justice?
Is that even possible or should we relinquish the language of mediation itself and find alternative processes that resonate more with our commitments and communities of practice?
These are some of the key questions we are grappling with in our project Talk4Peace. In our research we set out to explore possibilities and challenges in transforming mediation through engagement with feminist mediation scholarship, theories of intersectionality and gender justice, and in conversation with practitioners and activists committed to transformative practices in mediation and peacebuilding.
Given our positionalities the main focus of this research is the island of Ireland, however the project also draws on wider international perspectives. To begin our thinking, we are mobilising feminist critiques of conventional discourses and multi-track approaches to mediation, in order to scrutinise and build on the potentially productive, yet under theorised, concept of transformative mediation.
Going beyond tracks: a critique of “Big Man Mediation”
In a recent report, director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Emma Leslie poignantly writes that “Big men mediation is not about men. It’s about a hierarchical system that has become outdated in our way of approaching mediation and conflict” (pg.8). This is a useful starting point to think critically about established approaches to peace mediation, moving beyond the important, yet somewhat simplistic, concern with “adding more women/other excluded groups and stir”. It is an attempt to challenge the hierarchies of knowledge and power that are reproduced and reified within current approaches to multi-track mediation.
Feminist scholarship on peace mediation has sought to expose the diversity and extent of women’s expertise within mediation practice, including in relation to the vital and expansive work carried out by women in local communities using mediation as a peacebuilding tool. While women’s contribution to local peace mediation is so often overlooked, feminist scholarship and advocacy has also sought to better connect this ‘local’ work and expertise with international actors delivering mediation processes. However, in our initial conversations with mediation experts, it is clear that irrespective of the commitment to multi-track approaches, the dominant position and interests in conflict responses continues to privilege what happens in track-one, political negotiations. These processes tend to be highly male dominated and exclusionary, with the exceptions of a few elite women. Or where there has been efforts made to include more women’s voices in political negotiations, this frequently manifests in technical teams or working groups outside of the main negotiations, effectively side-lining women’s diverse needs and perspectives. Recent examples of this have been in the talks on Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, the latter of which has had devastating consequences for Afghan women.
On the other hand, there have been attempts to acknowledge and recognise the work of women and grassroot mediators through greater policy inclusion, capacity building and professional accreditations. However, increasing focus on professionalisation can also be a double edge sword. While professionalisation can work a form of recognition, it can also lead to further exclusions and alienation for groups or individuals who might not have access to these opportunities or interest in engaging with them.
As a way of navigating these challenges the Talk4Peace project builds on these critical insights to ask deeper question about the necessity of, and possibilities for, developing alternative approaches that might be critical, generative and vision-building. In doing this we question whether engaging further with the notion of ‘transformative mediation’ can offer a productive alternative?
Transformative mediation: A useful concept or a fuzzy aspiration?
The concept of ‘transformative mediation’ as defined by Robert Bush and Joseph Folger in their 1994 book The Promise of Mediation, has received significant and often justified criticism. The authors, both mediation practitioners themselves, define transformative mediation as a mediation practice distinct from problem-solving mediation. The difference, they claim, is that it places the emphasis on process as precedent over outcome. In focusing on the primacy of the process, they claim that this promotes the ‘empowerment’ of participants through the creation of space for better ‘recognition’ of participant’s diverse perspectives, needs, values and interests. The principles of empowerment and recognition are thus defined as the key principals of transformative mediation, which Bush and Folger add (rather condescendingly), contributes to the ‘moral growth’ of participants.
Bush and Folger’s claims have received extensive criticism ranging from claims of a lack of evidence to support the apparent effectiveness of the approach, to confusion over who or what is supposed to be transformed – i.e. is it supposed to be the character of the participants or the conflict between them, or both. (Needless to say, the former received the majority of criticism). More extreme critiques have even gone as far as describing the transformative approach as ‘delusional, confirming mediation as a “touchy-feely‟ activity carried out by do-gooders with little practical relevance to actual disputes.’
However, while we would concur with many of these critiques, there are certain aspects of the approach that we see as having value in reconsidering approaches to peace mediation. In particular, the focus on process. While not going as far as Bush and Folger in entirely de-prioritising the problem-solving aspect of mediation, we question whether a greater focus on process, does in fact promote greater recognition of diverse perspectives? In other words could a greater focus on process (whatever that might look like) bring about a more inclusive approach – where inclusivity is not just seen as ‘bums on seats’ but more about the pluralistic inclusion of diverse perspectives, cultural positionalities, needs and interests.
We therefore question in this research, what more transformative (and more inclusive) processes might look like? Are there alternative spaces in which mediation can be carried out, which can facilitate a more transformative approach? What examples of this exist both internationally and on the Island on Ireland?
In addressing these questions as the project develops, we hope to contribute to critical debates on the reshaping of dominant (exclusionary) approaches to multi-track negotiations and initiate a discussion on the practical potential of transformative mediation as a mechanism for more inclusive dialogue in peacebuilding.
By Maria Adriana Deiana and Heidi Riley