INTERNATIONAL MEDIATION – A PEACEFUL MEAN FOR SOLVING CONFLICTS

Abstract

The history of international relations has recorded a wide variety of peaceful means created and used by the international community for solving conflicts. Practice shows that within peace structures, despite de diversity of instruments available to international actors, mediation holds a special place. The extraordinary robustness and adaptability demonstrated by mediation during its long existence, its supple character and the contribution to finding the best deep, win-win solutions to the problems that stand at the origin of conflicting relations, the frequency with which mediations practices are used around the world, the growing interest in the theoretical and, especially, practical study of this peacemaking mean, recommends mediation as a useful tool, playing a significant role in complex actions of conflict resolution. This article aims to present mediation as a peaceful mean for conflict resolution, trying to answer a series of questions that will determine the structure of the analysis. Thus, we will try to find out what mediation is, what are its specific features that differentiate mediation from other tools available to the international community, when is mediation appropriate/needed, what are the reasons for accepting the use of mediation, respectively, how does a mediation process takes place.