Mediators

AIMP

  • A strategic civil society response to the call by the AUC to strengthen the African Peace and Security Architecture
  • Support Base for practicing mediators
  • Enhancing local, national and regional internal mediation capacity
  • Dynamic network of individuals and institutions
  • Strengthening local ownership
  • Solidarity between practitioners and the institutions with which they are connected

MEDIATORS WORKING ON CONFLICT SYSTEMS AT MULTIPLE LEVELS 

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

  • Forge and maintain linkages
  • Expand training and learning opportunities
  • Document and disseminate examples of good mediation practice
  • Connect mediation efforts at different levels
  • Local analysis and support to the deployment of Track I mediation teams
  • Provide a pool of skilled resource people

ACTIVITY AREAS

Community of Practice

  • Knowledge and experience sharing
  • Dissemination of case studies
  • Online portal development
  • Regular meetings of practicing mediators at regional and continental levels

Training and capacity building

  • Organising training courses on insider mediation
  • Development of training methodologies
  • Training of upcoming insider mediators

Direct support to mediation processes

  • Utilising members of the platform to provide timely support
  • Sustaining a resource group of skilled mediators
  • Analysing the context and conflict dynamics in support of these processes

Partnership building

  • Complementary support to Track I mediative processes
  • Building partnerships in support of national and local capacities for mediation and national peace architectures that are coherent, credible and complementary
  • Working closely with UNDP, the African Union Commission, including the Panel of the Wise and the Regional Economic Communities in support of the African Peace and Security Architecture
  • Networking, identifying complementarities with all key stakeholders

IMPERATIVES

  • Coordination and cooperative partnership building, building new complementarities
  • Harmonising formal and informal, contemporary and traditional approaches
  • Interconnections between initiatives, complementing not competing
  • Access to, support for, and recognition from AU and REC levels, and UNDP Country Offices and Regional Centres

INSIGHTS, CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNED

  • The disconnect between regional level, national level, local level processes undermines the effectiveness of efforts at all levels
  • Multi-level multi-stakeholder approaches that link short term rapid responses to longer term processes are more likely to achieve sustainable outcomes
  • Local level processes need to be recognised, valued and supported, but can also easily be taken over and overwhelmed or undermined
  • Mediative processes include diverse forms of trust, confidence building, learning and training that create spaces for dialogue and cooperative problem solving

ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS

  • Enhancing mediation capacity is more than training and deploying skilled mediators – it includes embedding a mediative approach into all forms of engagement in society, and nurturing a culture of dialogue and collaborative problem solving
  • Support aimed at building mediation capacity should strengthen what is already there, and be linked to existing systems and institutions if it is to be sustainable.
  • The ‘projectisation’ of mediative efforts and capacity building support, dependent on external funding undermines long term sustainability
  • Systemic and structural efforts to enhance mediation capacity could include an information gathering and sharing component, as well as the ability to respond
  • A legal foundation can underpin and strengthen efforts to use dialogue and mediation as dispute resolution processes
  • The media and the private sector are key stakeholders with whom more work could be done to bring them into processes and utilise the support they have to offer

SUMMARY OF OPPORTUNITIES

  • AIMP as a CAPACITY MULTIPLIER
  • AIMP as a catalyst for

COLLABORATIVE INCLUSIVE COALITIONS
More effective African Peace and Security Architecture

Strengthening appropriate integrated systems responses to shifting forms of emerging conflict

  • The democratisation processes
  • Regional harmonisation
  • Economic growth and growing inequality
  • Youth majority and related volatility
  • Land grabbing, resource extraction, food price increases and climate change
  • Ethnicity and related tensions on the rise
  • Shifts in global power balance, external manipulation and the rise of African solutions

AUC, UNDP, Regional Economic Communities Consultation Proccess

  • African Union Commission –Peace and Security Department
  • An African Peace and Security Architecture
  • ECOWAS -Accra declaration on strengthening national regional and continental coordination
  • SADC -Maseru declaration on a framework for peaceful development
  • Finding complementarity and opportunities for cooperative partnership building