UN provides Guidance for Effective Mediation

With armed conflicts trending upward and proving increasingly complex, the challenges are also mounting for mediators working to resolve them through negotiations. Guidance now available from the United Nations can help them to succeed, providing practical advice for navigating mediation processes effectively.

The UN Guidance for Effective Mediation, presented in September 2012 at a high-level event on the sidelines of the 67th United Nations General Assembly, is the first broad UN guidance of this kind available to mediators. It reflects the experience of mediators over more than six decades and was developed in close cooperation with United Nations partners including member states, regional and subregional organizations.  

The high-level launch of the guidance was organized in cooperation with the Group of Friends of Mediation – a grouping of UN member states co-chaired by Finland and Turkey who have taken an active and supportive interest in developing the UN’s conflict mediation capacities. Among the distinguished speakers were the President of the General Assembly Vuk Jeremić, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, and Foreign Ministers Ahmet Davutoğlu of Turkey and Erkki Tuomioja of Finland. They were joined at a panel discussion by senior mediators and mediation experts including the Joint Special Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi.

The UN Guidance for Effective Mediation was initially released in August 2012 by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as an annex of a broader report on trends and capacities in conflict mediation issued at the request of the UN General Assembly.