Tools in Network: an E-Net Approach to Sharing Mediation Competences.

Foreword

Mediation, meant as an alternative disputes resolution method to handle conflicts of social regulation and peaceful settlement of human relations, has been enforced with different terms in the various countries where it is practised. Although its specific evolution and the relevant techniques applied differ from one context to another, many mutual contaminations clearly appeared: Great Britain and the United States influenced each others; France welcomed various suggestions from Quebec; Spain supported several mediation movements in Argentina and the rest of Latin America; Italy's cooperation turned out very fruitful both with French and American mediation experiences.

Mediation is a method to solve conflicts arisen between two or more parties: its efficacy is based upon the conflict's re-lecture in an independent context, in the presence of a mediator, acting as a neutral third party, who "leads" the conflicting parties during the mediation process, according to a set of common rules shared by all the parties involved. This "basic format" of mediation has been taking different shapes over the years and originated in increased diversified interventions, both as to operational techniques and the focussed intervention itself. The multifaceted intervention models currently existing clearly witness the richness in experiences and the local contextualization of mediation practices resulting from their own social and cultural backgrounds. Some experts like Bonafé Schmitt (2001) have enquired whether mediation models could be classified according to their specific social context, especially as they developed in the United States and France.

This Didactic Unit shall focus on the American experience, with a particular attention to the model developed by Mark Umbreit, and the French one, specifically the model applied by Jacqueline Morineau. Both these mediation practices, despite their respective differences due to dissimilar historical, political, social and cultural backgrounds, derive from the same mediation model, i.e. the humanistic one, characterised by a strongly committed moral approach, focuses on the conflicting parties' aim of changing their own attitude and encourages their abilities to emancipate themselves and recognize each others as holders of common needs.

Under these circumstances the conflict, and above all weathering a conflict, is overshadowed by a chance of changing the parties' attitude. They have the responsibility of achieving certain results and the mediator is a facilitator who leads the parties involved in the mediation process. Empowerment is aimed at independently of any specific outcome of mediation: the parties gain strength from the self-consciousness/self-determination process in the mediation session by overcoming mutual suspicion and distrust and finally get to acknowledge each other (Bramanti 2005).

Let us examine now the various aspect of mediation's humanistic approach in Umbreit's and Morineau's models.