Eileen F. Babbitt

Overcoming the Obstacles to Effective Mediation of International Disputes

Mediation has been used to settle international conflicts ranging from sovereignty disputes between centuries-old enemies, to battles over the independence of colonies, to struggles over the use of natural resources. In a majority of the wars fought since 1945 involving at least 100 fatalities, the disputing parties accepted the intervention of a mediator.1 During this same period, mediation was attempted in about two-thirds of the conflicts among the nations of Africa and Latin America and 80 per cent of the conflicts in the Middle East.2 During the last forty years, mediation has been central to American foreign policy. Nearly every American administration has dispatched mediators to help resolve conflicts abroad.

When ADR Becomes the Law: A Review of Federal Practice

ConclusionWith the passage of the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act, the stage was set for innovation and change in federal agencies. Now, part way into the five-year life of the Act, a new administration has the potential to encourage even wider use of ADR at the federal level, providing still more examples from which to develop a clearer sense of best practice. Additional funds, both for ACUS and individual agencies, are vital to providing the level of experimentation, innovation, and documentation needed to ensure success.

Preventive Diplomacy by Intergovernmental Organizations: Learning from Practice

Abstract Conflict prevention is enjoying a renaissance in international policy circles. However, the official machinery of the international community presently offers few institutions with a specific mandate to address the causes of political violence at an early stage. One such multilateral mechanism dedicated solely to the prevention of conflict is the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Over two decades, the office has developed a significant track record of effectiveness against which to examine the preventive efforts of other intergovernmental organizations. In this article, we examine the prevention efforts of the HCNM in Georgia, Macedonia, and Ukraine and compare these with the preventive diplomacy of three other intergovernmental organizations (IGOs): the Organization of American States (OAS) in Guyana, the Commonwealth in Fiji, and the UN in Afghanistan, Burundi, and Macedonia. Our findings offer some useful and surprising insights into effective prevention practice, with implications for how IGOs might improve preventive diplomacy in the future.