{"id":1128,"date":"2012-10-15T20:49:15","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T00:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/?p=1128"},"modified":"2012-10-15T20:49:15","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T00:49:15","slug":"uia-mediation-forum-meets-in-zagreb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/uia-mediation-forum-meets-in-zagreb\/","title":{"rendered":"UIA Mediation Forum Meets in Zagreb"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 17th<\/sup> gathering of the World Forum of Mediation Centers was held under the auspices of the Union International des Avocats <\/a>in Zagreb, Croatia, on October 5-6, 2012.\u00a0 Mediators and Centers came from the U.S., Spain, Italy, India, Canada, Croatia, France, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Lebanon, Russia, the U.K., Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Cameroon, Hong Kong and Belgium.\u00a0 About 50 people were present.\u00a0 Co-President Thierry Garby <\/a>arranged this conference; Co-President Colin Wall <\/a>will arrange the next one, June 7-8, 2013, in Prague.<\/p>\n

The first program was a panel discussion of corporate representatives, reporting on their experiences and preferences with commercial mediators.\u00a0 The general tone was highly positive and supportive.\u00a0 In particular, both Mireille Bouzols-Breton of Technip (Paris) and Gilles Martin of Saipem (Paris) said that they considered mediation to be an essential attribute of their management program.\u00a0 They both are active in the oil & gas industry and engage in very large infrastructure projects.\u00a0 The clients are only a few (Shell, Chevron, etc.) and the financial risks are great.\u00a0 Therefore, disagreements arising from contracts must be resolved in a manner that points to future work and a minimum of public acrimony.\u00a0 Marina Kralj Mlisa, of Koncar-Electrical Industry Company (Zagreb), said that she gets most of her mediators through institutions and centers rather than by personal approaches, and the other two agreed that institutions make selection of qualified neutrals much easier.\u00a0 The panel also included\u00a0Mladen Vukmir, who is active in the ADR Committee of INTA, and Ale\u0161 Zalar, who until recently was the Minister of Justice for Slovenia.\u00a0 I had the honor to chair the discussion.<\/p>\n

Next on the program was a lecture demonstration of “mediation styles.”\u00a0\u00a0 Regine Lang-Sasse of Munich Re (Munich) had a dialogue with Colin Wall on facilitative mediation principles, and then two attendees played the roles of disputants in three sequential styles of mediation: “directive” (conducted by Texas mediator Jeff Abrams), “transformative” (conducted by Slovenian mediator and trainer Marko Irsic) and “Integrative” (conducted by Quebec professor and mediator Thierry Berault).\u00a0 The result was entertaining and diverting, and the three mediators were very good at articulating the theoretical basis for their styles.<\/p>\n

Camilo Azcarate of the World Bank <\/a>in Washington addressed the Bank’s internal mediation program, and was joined by Georges Feghali of Lebanon and Thierry Garby of France.<\/p>\n

On Saturday morning there were impressive, pithy presentations by three mediation centers on their current work in identifying and addressing specific client needs.\u00a0 Katarina Kresal of the newly founded European Centre for Dispute Resolution<\/a>, in Ljubjana, Slovenia, described a consumer complaint procedure that has earned the support and approval of stakeholders, including many companies who financially support it and consider their participation to be a competitive advantage.\u00a0 She said that collective or coordinated claims were encouraged, rather than barred as they are in America, and indeed the Centre offers its services at a discount in such instances.\u00a0 Greg Hunt of CEDR <\/a>gave an update on CEDR Solve.\u00a0 His view — not new but always worth remembering – is that a service provider relies on relationships rather than brand recognition, product lines or trust.\u00a0 Get out of the office and go to the customer.\u00a0 Finally, Stefano Azzali of the Milan Chamber of Commerce Arbitration Center painted a chaotic picture of the Italian dispute market since the effective date of mandatory mediation as a condition requisite to filing cases with the court.\u00a0 Italian mediation centers now number over 800, and he described it as “a zoo; and like a zoo there are nice animals and some not so nice.”<\/p>\n

The last formal program was chaired by Fabienne van der Vleugel of France, on “Become and even better mediator.”<\/p>\n

During the exchange of news from the Centers at the close of the program, Colin Wall noted the recent passage of a mediation ordinance in Hong Kong.\u00a0 An article describing the provisions may be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A summary of programs offered at the recent UIA World Mediation Forum in Zagreb, Croatia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,13,14],"tags":[25,10,15,33],"class_list":["post-1128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-international","category-mediation","tag-adr-institutions","tag-conflict-management","tag-mediation","tag-public-policy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}