Compte rendu rédigé par Hélène Gebhardt, membre du conseil d’administration de l’ANM: <> C’était en effet très bien et de haute volée mais également galvanisant ces échanges internationaux pour faire avancer la médiation en promotion et en techniques et outils ! J’étais notamment à l’atelier sur les neuro-sciences tenues par deux médiatrices irlandaises passionnantes visant à ouvrir de nouvelles voies sur le développement des compétences. ————————– On May 27 and 28, 2010, was held in Bourg-la-Reine / Big Paris the 3rd European Conference on Mediation organized, under the aegis of the EMNI (European Mediation Network Initiative), by Gabrielle Planès president of the ANM (National Association of the Mediators) in partnership with ESSEC business School / IRÉNÉ (Institute of Research and Teaching on Negotiation) around the theme « Mediation and Civil Society in Europe, Towards a New Mindset ». After Vienna and Belfast and before Bratislava, it is a French-speaking country, which was chosen for this edition. A scientific committee, composed of about twenty persons from 12 different nationalities, selected, amongst 130 contributions, 50 workshops proposed by participants coming from more than 20 countries. About 400 participants from many horizons made the journey and fuelled the debates between practitioners and researchers thus giving to this conference an exceptional opportunity to meet and share experience. All the sectors of mediation were represented and, as it was underlined, mediation is a powerful lever to accompany the transformations of society by breathing in sense. These two days showed that it was necessary to work collectively on the recognition and professionalisation of mediation which gathers without excluding and which strives to reduce the feeling of injustice. The aim is not only to solve conflicts in an amicable way but more and more so to prevent them by using the synergies without being in a guilt relationship. The study of the impact of relational conflicts on health, with the help of neurosciences, demonstrates that the way of managing emotions has a striking influence on disorders, diseases and addictions. Furthermore, focusing the persons on co-creation of a solution allows installing another level of dialogue and decreases the suffering, in the workplace for example. Enabling the other one to talk as well as mastering the wording in order to understand one self, to be understood and to understand what is said to us in a compartmentalized world, is one of the objectives of mediation. The crisis, which we presently face at various levels and which leads to fundamental changes, gives mediation a considerable advantage in strengthening democracy thanks to three ingredients: personal contact, fair treatment and appropriate information. These elements, added to transparency, create the conditions to maintain the links between people and establish the necessary trust to deeply transform our way of seeing things and better live together. This is precisely the spirit of mediation, which distinguishes the function from the posture, based on an attitude of both respect and attention to the otherone.“Separate the problem from the persons « , » manage the imbalance « , » decode our own needs as much as the needs of the other one « , » make moving on possible » these are some of the sentences heard here and there during the workshops which define this particular approach requiring ‘ faith, hope and charity ‘. An idea emerged: the wealth of being interdisciplinary and transversal which meet the key point of mediation, namely its flexibility that makes it so unique. The variety of issues tackled and geographical origins from USA to New Zealand, from Brazil to Morocco by way Georgia and Finland, gave this bilingual French-English conference its high thinking level and enabled extremely fruitful exchanges. Finally, the frustration resulting from having to choose between interesting concomitant workshops will be compensated by the forthcoming acts of the colloquium. A big bravo to the organizing team and many thanks to the steering committee! Drafted by Hélène Gebhardt and translated by Isabelle Baudelaire Members of the board of the ANM
