Andreas Velthuizen has had a long and varied career in peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and dispute resolution, working in countries all over Africa. He is South African and is currently a Professor in Politics and African Studies at the University of South Africa, with a focus on Peace and Security theory and practice in Africa. In 2009, he retired from a 34-year military career that involved travel all over the continent and the world. Although he claims to never have officially practiced mediation, the work that he has done, training community peacebuilders in dispute resolution, working in communities plagued by violence, and designing interventions to prevent the outbreak of violent conflict, has left him with decades of experience in creating peace. When asked about his future in mediation, Andreas said he’s looking forward to applying this experience to getting more involved in community mediation when he retires from his post at the University.

The Institute for Dispute Resolution in Africa

Andreas became involved with MBBI after first being a longstanding member of Rotary International. He has been part of a team that has started a project with a Rotary club (The E-club of Rotary District 9400) – to do mediation capacity-building in Southern Africa, namely, to train mediators and peacebuilders; this project began before he even knew about MBBI. But now the groups are working together on plans and are formalizing a vocational training team for mediators alongside MBBI – hopefully to come together this year.

For over 30 years as a career officer in the South African army, Andreas worked in a variety of different capacities – from his beginning as a parachute officer to a researcher, to the kind of position he held in 2002 when he became a military advisor for a multi-national team responsible for implementing peace agreements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As he became embroiled in that situation, he also worked in 2017 and 2018 as a project leader integrating the public service of the DRC, preparing different rebel leaders so that they could live in relative harmony – as he modestly put it, he truly developed his negotiation skills in this role.

Before his current role as a professor, he was the Head for the Institute of African Renaissance Studies and Acting Head of the Institute for Dispute Resolution in Africa. From 2013 to 2017, Andreas worked as the project leader for the South African San Community Dispute Resolution project, doing community-based participatory research in the San Community in the Northern Cape. The scope of this research involved documenting dispute resolution practices, processes, and customs of the Ikun and Khwe lands and using said research to develop interventions to prevent violence in the community. A series of interventions were implemented, some of which continue to be used today. With donor funds and university sponsorship, a Knowledge Centre was built for the interventions and as a place to conduct dispute resolution training in the San village of Platfontein near Kimberley, the capital of the Northern Cape province.

Cultural Competency

Andreas maintains that it is important to have the wisdom that comes with age and experience in order to be a good mediator. He recounts that the first time he worked in this community he was only 20 years old, and without any experience and with large group mediation and facilitation, he struggled to help the community navigate the simplest social disputes. But that experience left him with the idea of working in dispute resolution practice and inspired him to return to the same community later in life with a broader understanding and the experience to work more in-depth with intervention practices. He has even facilitated a large-scale dispute resolution process during the Project, with a successful outcome of different people talking to each other for the first time in 10 years.

Andreas, although working to create and implement peacebuilding techniques, also believes that there is importance in the cultural history and context of traditional mediation practices; “In some ways, they are doing dispute resolution very well in the San Community; Western traditional dispute resolution – involving ligation, a winner, a loser – does not really work in African contexts. It rarely works to reestablish relationships.”

As a pragmatic peacebuilder, Andreas always looks for the most effective way to bring peace to the people he works with; “We can talk a lot about peace and we can write and study forever, but how do you implement it?  So mediation, for me, is the ideal instrument for that – a very powerful instrument.”  He names the three most important qualities and actions of someone working in dispute resolution as awareness, proper planning, and working to develop a personal style in order to help people restore relationships. By awareness, he means an understanding of the situation, a high level of self-awareness, cross-cultural understanding, and understanding the frame of reference for different parties (i.e. what pressures and demands do the system place on them?). This then can lead to proper planning; planning that is aligned with the needs and expectations of the parties concerned – it is especially important to keep in mind the bigger outcome, how will you involve other stakeholders, planning time and place, etc. Develop a personal style to restore relationships – specifically for that restoration, is something that happens naturally over time when working in this field.

Advice for anyone involved in peacebuilding: “you are not responsible for the personal healing of individuals, not of a whole society. But you have to work on your inner peace and apply it where you can.”

Written by Lizzy Nestor: MBBI Writer

Ayo Ayoola-Amale is a member of the three-person MBBI Ombuds Team. Ayo works as a Conflict Resolution Professional, Lawyer, Certified Educator, and Peace Advocate. She has advanced training and certification in Law, Conflict Resolution, Facilitation, and Peacebuilding fields. She spends her time advocating as a peacebuilder between her home community of Lagos, Nigeria, and her current community in Accra, Ghana. A committed peace advocate Ayo’s mission is to “build local peace and advocate for peace in a volatile world.”  She was the Honourable Global Mediator (2014) and West African regional representative to the World Mediation Organization (WMO). Ayo is the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP) Senior Vice-President for Africa. She is currently the President of Women International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Ghana. She and Yolanda Collins (a second member of the Ombuds team) will also be at the IOA 2020 Conference in Portland, Oregon.

The Work of an Ombuds

An Ombudsman, Ombudsperson, or the gender-neutral Ombuds is an official charged with representing the interests of a group by investigating and addressing complaints reported by members. Ombuds are independent, impartial, and neutral in their review of facts and complaint investigation, but most importantly, they are Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) practitioners.

The MBBI Ombuds Team has jurisdiction over issues regarding:

• Actions carried (or the absence of) by MBBI, including the Board of Directors and management
• Activities or behaviors you believe are unfair
• Discrimination, particularly on the basis of race, gender, or disability
• Bullying by someone in your team or your team leader

Please contact the Ombuds lead at ombuds@mediatorsbeyondborders.org, or if you prefer that the Ombuds lead to contacts you by phone, please send an email providing a number, date, and time where you may be reached.

Ayo has been a part of the MBBI Ombuds Team since its inception in 2016 but has been working to the specifics of the law, mediation and conflict resolution and facilitation for the past 25 years. Through her career as Lead, First Conflict Resolution Services, she became aware of the fortitude of mediation as a more effective method of problem-solving than traditional law settlements. As a workplace mediator, she realized that resolving conflict within the boundaries of office politics in a competitive and often stress-filled environment was vital to success through creative solutions to common conflicts. Using problem solving and communication skills, negotiation and mediation she successfully worked with others to bring various entities together for a productive working environment.

WILPF, CSW, IOA

Of the multitudes of global board, activities, and peace initiatives that Ayo is a part of, her strongest connection to global peace is through the Women International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She is the founder of WILPF – Ghana Section, she describes WILPF Ghana foremost as a women’s rights and peace organization that symbolize agents of change that can challenge the power relations underpinning gender inequalities. Gender norms are often shaped and reshaped at the local level and can be influenced by local, national, and international actors. Therefore, connections with grassroots initiatives for social change and gender equality are a strategic prerequisite to promoting gender equality.

Ayo will be traveling to New York in early March to present at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). She will be on the sisters, seeds and soil panel advocating for gender equality and peace. The letter from WILPF to the CSW about this panel can be read in more detail here. This year is the 25^th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, and sessions will focus on progress (and lack thereof) on platform provisions, on the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, and on related UN resolutions, such as UNSC Resolution 1325. Furthermore, MBBI will be attending the CSW as well and will be hosting several side events throughout the event allowing Ayo to combine her two international peace organizations at the same international UN summit!

Poet, Artist, and Author

In 2010, Ayo, founded Splendors of Dawn Poetry Foundation and along with Nigerian Poet and Author, Diego Odoh Okenyodo Co-founded the West Africa Poetry Prize (WAPP) in 2013, of which she is a Director. “Poetry is a huge portion of my life and I have been able to link my peacebuilding background into writing and publishing global works of literary art. I believe that arts-informed initiatives can support communities to identify sources of resilience and craft imaginative solutions to seemingly insurmountable threats.” Ayo is the author of six volumes of poems and a play and has performed her poetry at national and international events. Some of her literary works include Broken Dreams (2011), a play, Life Script, a collection of poems with some published online.

She is a member of the International Coordinating Committee of the World Poetry Movement and a former Vice- President, Africa of the Movimiento Poetas del Mundo (Poets of the World). Ayo was the organizer of “100 thousand poets for change” Accra (2013). Her poems have appeared in national and international anthologies, journals, and magazines and have been translated into several international languages. She has performed, recited her poems at local, national, and international platforms, events/functions, and festivals.

Article by Benjamin Lutz, MBBI Communications and Operations Manager

Macarena is a mediator born in Spain and living in London, with a degree in Biology, a Ph.D., 11 years of professional experience working in land-use conflict and sustainability and 15 years of practice in mediation and conflict resolution. From a young age, she always loved working with animals and nature and less so working with people; but during her studies in Biology she came to the realization that “Compassion and empathy for people, these are integral to protecting the planet and nature.”

From her late teens she had dreamed of working with the UN and other international organizations, bringing people and cultures together in a world without boundaries. At school in Barcelona, away from her hometown of Malaga, she was bullied as ‘the outsider’ and was told to “go home, where you come from, you don’t belong here”. This has been a constant in her life, giving her a deeper understanding and empathy for what people go through when they are in conflict, yielding greater perception of stereotyping and discrimination. Macarena realized that most people feel fear and anxiety in the face of the unknown or anyone ‘different’ to them, and that home is found within oneself.

After completing her 5-year bachelor’s degree (Barcelona and Malaga), Macarena wanted to travel overseas and study human interactions with the environment. She enrolled in an MSc in Rural and Land Ecology Survey in the Netherlands, after which she worked within EU funded-projects on sustainability and desertification at Amsterdam (NL) and Cranfield (UK) Universities.  During this period, she was able to do fieldwork all over Europe as well as Thailand and Central America and do presentations at international conferences.

From Organic Farming to Organic Mediation

Macarena has been involved with the organic farming movement since the early 1990s. In 1997, she moved to the UK to finish her Ph.D. at the Complex Systems Research Centre, Cranfield University, where she focused on soil and social policy indicators for conversion to organic farming. She lamented the lack of action of decision-makers regarding carcinogenic agricultural products such as glyphosate, where studies showing their toxicity had been known for a long time but had been denied publicly. She explains that today, “We know about climate change, but still, people deny it. We know about sustainability and what needs doing, but still, people deny it. We know about was hatred causes, but still, people have hatred.” She continues with incredulity: “We live in a unique period in history where we have an oversaturation of information and knowledge about all these key issues, but an overall refusal to fully act upon them. We seem to be intent on becoming devolving rather than evolving humans.” 

After completing her PhD, she became a Research Associate at Imperial College London working on a project for sustainable transport policies. At that time, the UK had started implementing bullying and harassment policies at universities, and at Imperial they were looking for volunteers to train as contact points. One of the trainers was a mediator and up to that point Macarena didn’t realize that mediation was a potential career option and felt, “It was like seeing the light somehow!” So she enrolled in an MSc in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at Birkbeck College, University of London. “I went to the first class and I felt that I’d come home. I fell in love with it from day one!” 

Macarena loves understanding the complexity of interactions and relations, so she wasn’t happy just specializing in a single area of mediation or conflict resolution practice. Instead, between 2005 and 2010 she trained and started practicing as a mediator in community, intergenerational, family, and workplace contexts, as well as a trainer and conflict coach. As she explains it, “I want to not only know about workplace conflict, for example, but also how the family environment affects conflicts at work. Which also then affects how you deal with your neighbors and conflicts with your children. I wanted to explore how the same mediation principles and skills interrelate and adapt to those different contexts. So, as a trainer of mediators, I draw from my mediation and conflict coaching experiences and vice-versa. Each facet is integrated and constantly changing, and this shapes each approach I take to working with conflict.”

Engaging in the Mediation Community

Macarena has been a long time member of different mediation associations, like the UK College of Mediators and the Association of Conflict Resolution (ACR). At the ACR conference in 2020, she became connected to MBBI and remembers thinking, “Oh my God, I would love to me part of this!” Macarena continued practicing as a mediator, trainer and conflict coach but knew something was lacking. She explains, “I was missing the international dimension in my professional work. For me, mediation is about being human and that is a global proposition.”

She joined MBBI in 2014 and attended the 7^th MBBI Congress Romania, 2015.  She felt as if she was floating at the conference from the joy of meeting so many people with similar ideas and actively trying to improve communication and understanding… making the world a better place. After she joined MBBI, she became involved with MBBI projects in South America, being appointed Co-Leader of the MBBI Colombia project together with Catalina Chaux-Echeverri and Charlie Pillsbury. The team set out developing the project whilst branching into training with the International Peace Training Institute (IPTI) for Women which was held in Colombia for the Andean countries in 2017 and 2018. The aim of the program is to empower women in peacebuilding, from the community to the level of peace talks and accords which have a strong founding in UN Resolution 1325. Macarena explained that involving women is essential for the sustainability of potential and existing accords. IPTI trainings have happened in different parts of the world and are creating a network of women in mediation who are skilled and knowledgeable about conflict resolution processes.

“Mediation is the perfect field to learn, test, apply, and nurture our personal growth and evolve as a human spirit.” Presently, Macarena continues this journey through her company Ataraxy Mediation and with other professional organizations. She mediates and delivers accredited mediation training, offers conflict coaching, mentors mediators, develops projects and trains mediators with MBBI, collaborates with the Global Youth Development Initiative, advocates for organic farming and products, and fights to protect Earth and erase boundaries. In the end, this really means exploring the interaction between the home inside us, unique to each human, and the home that this planet is for all people to share.

Article by Kylea Shropshire, MBBI Writer

Louis Cohen has had a decades-long career as a mediator and a peacebuilder, holding a wide variety of positions ranging from the military to law enforcement, to community mediator. Throughout the years, it is clear that no matter what role he is in, he is guided by patience, kindness, and the desire to sow peace in the world around him. Louis may be new to MBBI, joining just last year, but his personal values and his strong vision of a more peaceful and harmonious world are exactly in line with the MBBI ethos and goals.

“Mediation to me is synonymous with communication because it brings opportunity for people to share, from the mind and the heart, in a manner that the other person is going to hear them.” 

From the Army to the NYPD

At the age of 17, Louis joined the army and was later deployed to Vietnam. In his view this exposure to the real nature of violent conflict, and the ways in which it impacts people (civilians and military personnel alike) allowed him to develop an understanding of the nature of peace. Here, he began to learn about the true nature of communication, how to truly listen, how to approach a situation without bias and prejudice and anger, skills that would serve him well his whole career.

When he left the army, Louis became a police officer with the NYPD in the Narcotics division. He also worked in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with the Neighborhood Police Team. Although he notes ‘the word mediation wasn’t in my vocabulary yet’, in this role he engaged with and built rapport with the locals and was able to build on his skills as a  communicator; “I’m a believer in grassroots, in asking people ‘What can I do to help you?’ and that’s what I did when I walked the beat. I would ask people ‘What would you like police officers to do for you?’ 

A Career in Criminal Justice

After moving to Florida, Louis worked as a private investigator and earned his Master’s degree, and it was at this time when he began to learn about mediation – at the time and in Florida, it was primarily a field focused around domestic issues. As an expert in the criminal justice system, however, Louis looked for opportunities to apply mediation practices to changing the path of those involved in the justice system. He went on to work in North Carolina for six years as a mediator in the court system, practicing victim-offender mediation and what came to be called restorative justice. These practices work to disrupt a predetermined path that many arrested individuals fall into, of jail time and increased likelihood of recidivism, and allow people a chance to make amends for their mistakes and re-enter mainstream society.

Besides his years of work in victim-offender mediation, Louis is involved in two key programs that reflect his personal values as a peacebuilder and as a believer in restorative justice. The first is his local Veterans Treatment Court (VTC), something which he is personally involved in as a peacebuilder but also as a veteran himself. The VTC works with veterans who have been arrested to treat and address the root issues that lead them to be arrested. The two key aspects are mentorship and psychological help and treatment. The second program is Teen Court, which works with teen offenders to help them avoid a record and avoid recidivism. In this, a practice that is used in many places across the country, a real courtroom setting is operated by a group of teenagers, allowing for all involved to understand and form their own ideas of justice, fairness, and what it means to make amends. This work demonstrates Louis’ constant of always looking to the future – with this, his openness to new ideas, and his interest in climate change mediation,  he demonstrates an ever-present curiosity and optimism.

De-escalation

From the outside, Louis certainly has an impressive resumé, but as an individual, it barely does him justice. He is his own innocence project, going out of his way to ensure that justice is done, and even has been arrested himself in the course of proving the innocence of a client. When you speak to him, he absolutely exudes calmness, patience, and an openness to the world around him. He recounts an incident that occurred when he was a police officer in which he talked down a woman holding a knife to her husband’s throat – something he did without force or the threat of force, something he did simply by listening to her and allowing her the space to be angry without judgment or fear. Dramatic stories of de-escalation are just the surface level demonstration of Louis’ deep, ingrained need to spread peace, and a bottomless well of patience and empathy.

Written by Lizzy Nestor: MBBI Writer

Ajoeb Mohamedajoeb, an experienced mediator and CEO of the firm Mohamedajoeb Mediators, has always felt a strong connection to the field of mediation, starting with his own name containing two religious prophets: Ajoeb (Job) and Mohamed. The prophets, according to the sacred writings, were reconciliatory figures, carriers of peace along their path. Ajoeb emulates this in his daily life, by helping employers and employees solving their conflicts in the workplace as well as by reconciling conflicts between neighbours in his own community. Moreover, Ajoeb is specialized in organizing team trainings for companies, where workers are provided with appropriate tools and skills to deal constructively with conflicts in the workplace. “At the end of the day, mediators are the legacy of the prophets, we are surely following their path of peace and reconciliation.” 

Ajoeb became connected to MBBI in 2017, after having attended the 8th MBBI Congress in The Hague. He was inspired by the mission and vision of MBBI, as well as by the possibility of becoming part of a global family of mediators and gaining the opportunity to exchange expertise with like-minded mediators. “I remained impressed by the global outreach and commitment of MBBI, which puts at its center “us” as professionals that can practically contribute to a more peaceful world and the well-being of people throughout the globe.”

An Unexpected Encounter with Mediation

Ajoeb’s educational background looks quite atypical for the mediator he is today. Having taken the undergraduate studies in law and econometrics, he realized that pursuing a career in these areas was not suitable for him.“One of the things I did not like about starting a career in the law field is that it is mostly unidirectional, justice often goes solely top-down. On the other hand, mediation involved two or more sides as equals, considering their preferences, perspective, and feelings.” Before becoming an official mediator, however, Ajoeb worked for more than 20 years as manager and director in companies within the technological field, particularly focusing on stimulating strong cooperation between educational institutions and technology firms, ready to provide development opportunities to young students.

It is precisely at this point in his life that Ajoeb unexpectedly encountered mediation. Thanks to the trainings that workers were offered inside his company as an asset to enhance their personal and professional skills, he opted to take an intensive training in mediation, knowing how crucial this skill could be within his working environment. And he fell for it! “After taking the training in mediation, I finally felt I had found my vocation in life, and I decided to become what I was feeling to be: a mediator.” Sparked by this conviction, Ajoeb obtained the Mediators Federation Netherlands (MFN) certification as a mediator in 2008, a special register for Dutch mediators giving proof of the high degree of qualification for the profession. He soon after decided to found his own firm, the Mohamedajoeb Mediators, specialized in employment mediation, team trainings for companies and intercultural mediation in the workplace.

Mediation to Ease Cultural Frictions in the Netherlands

One of the key areas of Ajoeb’s work concerns intercultural mediation, strengthened by the fact that he comes from a multi-cultural background. Born in The Netherlands to Surinamese parents that emigrated in the 60s from the former Dutch colony, he grew up in the City of Justice and Peace, The Hague. The Netherlands, due to its colonialist past, is an extremely varied country in terms of ethnicities and national belongings. Integration today is mired by the emergence of cultural frictions, both in the daily life of communities as well as in the workplace. From here, Ajoeb’s commitment to intercultural mediation is crucial to prevent social fragmentation and promote inclusiveness through dialogue and open confrontation. His expertise focuses on labour mediation within companies, especially for conflicts arising between employers and employees as well as community integration mediation.

“In the Netherlands, there are more than 200 nationalities plus as many ethnic and diverse backgrounds, and the topics of integration and inclusion are quite hot right now. For this reason, my work aims at stimulating companies and communities to create inclusive environments and enhance diversified settings where integration is promoted and people from any ethnic background can develop a strong sense of belonging.”

A point Ajoeb is keen to underline is that the word ‘intercultural’ does not exclusively apply to conflicts arising between exponents of different ethnicities, but it should be understood broadly as encompassing divergences between ways of thinking, such as men and women or between youngsters and elder people. In his work, Ajoeb’s personal commitment is high. He is a Muslim and hence able to understand first-hand the discriminatory attitudes and practices that affect Muslim communities. “In the Netherlands and the whole of Europe, I can see the rise of Islamaphobic sentiments, and I want to give my contribution and help using mediation to counter this rise. My religious identity is helpful in many situation when mediating disputes in which Muslims are involved because I understand the religious aspects of the conflict.”

Loosen the Hostile Spirits in Conflict

“Our societies are still highly conflictual, and a lot of conflicts are solved by going directly to Court.” According to him, the main issue stands in the fact that people are often blinded by anger and pride when any kind of dispute arises, therefore inhibiting any window of communication. There is no magic behind the intervention of a mediator, just a strong determination towards making the parties open their channels of communication to properly talk with each other. Such a process holds the extraordinary power of unleashing human beings’ potential for empathy and recognition and this is how a simple recipe based on mutual respect and acceptance can solve most conflicts. “Mediation is able to make people scrape beyond the surface and to loosen their hostile spirits by recognizing each others’ fears, emotions, and desires.”

Ajoeb agrees with the view that mediation is still too much undervalued in The Netherlands and there is widespread ignorance about it. A necessary step to improve in this direction is to make people understand that it is not necessary for an all-out conflict to exist to resort to the intervention of a mediator, but even smaller conflicts must be dealt with constructively to avoid escalations. The key to an effective conflict resolution for Ajoeb? The criticality of recognizing the action-reaction dynamics which can escalate a small controversy into a conflict. “A conflict never starts with the first sentence,” he concludes.

Written by Matteo Piovacari: MBBI Writer