Enhancing Partners’ Skills for Effective Mediation

Partner organizations from Civil Peace Service (CPS) Bread for the World Network Liberia gathered in Marshall, Lower Margibi County from March 18-20, 2024 to attend the Civil Peace Service mediation follow-up training.

The training aimed at exchanging ideas on past learnings, highlighting change stories, and enhancing knowledge and skills, needed for mediation and peace work and follows a previous training in Grand Bassa County, west central Liberia in 2022. The three-day intensive training focused on active listening, mediation principles, the role of the mediator, power in mediation, and phases of mediation that included, role play by participants.

How does the training aid CPS partners’ mediation work? How useful is it to partners’ work?

Reverend Phillip Nushann of the Lutheran Church in Liberia Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Program (LCL-THRP) says the training enhances productivity and effective service delivery as mediation is an important aspect of the LCL-THRP’s work.

“As managers in our different organizations, one of the things we do is to resolve conflicts.” In Grand Bassa County LCL-THRP works with 199 communities in four administrative districts. The focus of LCL-THRP’s work in the districts is peacebuilding and mediation. This according to Reverend Nushann, shows how mediation is important to their work.

“Having the skills, techniques, understanding, and right attitude enables effective mediation in our work,” says Reverend Nushann. This he says makes partners effective and can resolve many issues through mediation. Given LCL-THRP intervention in Grand Bassa County in peace-building and mediation, there is a reduction in the number of civil cases being reported to the Police in Grand Bassa County according to Nushann.

The Liberia Council of Churches is another partner organization of the Civil Peace Service Network Partners Liberia. The Council of Churches is also actively involved in mediation. Miss Luna Kiazolu of the Liberia Council of Churches says the council carries out mediation in Churches, entities, and communities. The LCC has an open space engagement with youth groups, which also involves mediation between conflicting parties in land disputes. 

Land disputes are also mediated through community mediation. The training enhances the mediation skills of LCC mediators involved in mediation to enhance their skills to mediate conflicts in their areas of intervention. Mediation in CPS work is cardinal, as CPS partners work in communities where conflict is part of everyday activities in some of the communities. Francis Konyon of the Center for Justice and Peace Studies, CJPS says mediation is another means of alternative dispute resolution, as issues are resolved with the parties expressing satisfaction in most cases.

With their work in Bong and Margibi Counties, CJPS has been mediating election-related conflicts among community members, leading to the resolution of the conflicts. This training has certainly enhanced the skills of participants from the mediation follow-up training for Bread for the World -Civil Peace Service partners.