Is mediation an appropriate tool for peace training?

The workshop on mediation as a tool for peace training was organized by BMI (Austrian ministry of Internal Affairs) and ARGE Bildungsmanagement and was held on the 18th of June 2018, the international day of mediation, in Vienna, Austria. The workshop took the form of an evening discussion round and took place between 18h and 21h.

The event focused on mediation, an important topic on which many trainings occur in the peace training field, but also in other areas involving conflict resolution (e.g. interpersonal relations, business). The workshop focused on whether mediation should be included more extensively in the preparation of field personnel, in particular as a way to develop their interpersonal communication skills.

Indeed, interpersonal communication skills have been identified as an important gap in peace training and staff preparation by the PeaceTraining.eu project (D.3.5.).