How does mediation prevent, manage, and resolve international conflict - Thesis Example

to bring peace and security to different nations and diminishing the threats imposed on international security by bridging the gap between conflicting parties through mutual settlement and negotiation. Intractable international disputes have always been there with us and have been posing threats to international peace and security. More than this, they lead to continuous wars, violence and numerous deaths from time to time. International stability is always at stake owing to these conflicts that do not have a solution to them and where none of the disputants are willing to compromise to reach a settlement.

It’s very difficult to find a solution to such intractable disputes since they go on for a long period with negotiations almost impossible. However, in such cases, mediation is a tool which can bring down the effect of the escalating disputes and its consequences including violence, war and deaths to a lower count. “It offers the prospect of escaping the dilemmas of intractability”. (Bercovitch 2004) Mediation is a process in which a third party neutral helps in resolving a dispute between two or more other parties.

The role of the mediator is to facilitate and assist the parties in working out what the real issues of dispute are, allowing communication between them and other things that meet the interest of the parties by finding a solution to their dispute. (Honeyman, Yawanarajah, 2003) The paper finds out the different types of mediation; the role played by a mediator in bridging the gap between two parties involved in the dispute; the purpose of mediation in international conflicts; the loopholes that arise due to mediators losing humanitarian values and the ways of enhancing effectiveness of mediation.

It has clearly pointed out the nations undergoing intractable disputes in the 70’s and 80’s and the number of deaths arising due to the parties not reaching any settlement. A case study of African civil wars also brings to the fore that