For the past five years, the Mediation Board of T&T has celebrated a mediation week once a year. But so impassioned are we as a board about the transforming power of mediation and the potential that lies within this area for positive change, we were convinced that it is time to celebrate mediation month. A month of activities to highlight the benefits of mediation and the need for the public to access and understand it as a powerful means of resolving conflict peacefully.
Mediation itself is a form of dispute resolution, a very fluid process which depends upon the skill and patience of the mediator in assisting the parties to resolve the dispute. Confidentiality lies at the heart of the process which engages people to be understanding, respectful, calm and creative, and to resolve a dispute which has huge legal, emotional and relationship costs, and to settle on their own terms which they both accept. It has been used globally and regionally as a process to ease the courts' backlog and to deliver access to justice.
Our task at the Mediation Board is to regulate this practice of mediation. It is the only body that accredits mediation training programmes, mediation trainers, mediators and mediation agencies. Under the Mediation Act certified mediators are guided by a code of ethics, which guarantees to the public a level of safety, transparency and accountability in the use of mediation. There is also an underlying principle of humanity which is imbedded in many of our religious beliefs and teachings which gives the process a wide appeal as a mechanism for social change and a gateway to peace.
Mediation is more than a process
It is this idea of mediation where a space is created for people to express appreciation, compassion, collaboration, communication that has excited us as a board to say that mediation is more than a process, it is a mindset. So, take our tradition where we celebrate the beginning of our mediation activities in worship and in the space of different religious groups each year. Last year, it was a Mandir in Curepe, and the Raja Yoga centre in Chaguanas. The year before, we went to the ASJA Complex in Charliveille. On another occasion, we went to the Anglican Church. This year, we are at St Charles Presbyterian. The importance of us going to different religious groups is to symbolise the essence of mediation, of walking in the space of others, understanding their perspectives and views and respecting their ideas, recognising that in this common band of humanity no one has a monopoly of ideas or solutions for the problems in this world. That solutions lie within each and every one of us. For us, mediation is more than just a process which facilitates dialogue, it is a mindset in achieving social justice. It calls on us to think about our future collaboratively and collectively that we cannot exist unless we co-exist. This accords with our own notions of spirituality of our own power to heal, to regenerate, and to build again through a compassion for our common humanity.
The pain of every judge or magistrate is to witness the long line of sufferers. Chinua Achebe, that famous African novelist, wrote: "When suffering knocks at your door and you say that there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool." There is a long line of sufferers sitting on their stools at the doorsteps of the court–families torn apart, business hung up, children at war, and they seek justice. But what is their version of justice? Revenge? Retribution? Further harm? Or is it healing and peace? Can the law in and of itself restore harmony, peace and deliver social justice?
�2 A family is in dispute over possession of family and...the law says that only one member of the family can get possession. Then what about the relationship in the family? Who cares...
�2 The court orders a neighbour to tear down a wall because it is encroaching on the neighbour's property. What happens when the order is effected but the relationship between the neighbours is still acrimonious? Who cares...
�2 The court grants custody of a child to one parent, leaving the parents still in a poisonous relationship with one another and affecting the development of the child. Who cares...
�2 When the law gives the green light to the State to complete mega projects despite protests from villagers and citizens, is it that the law cannot accommodate the concerns of others?
The toxicity of law and an ethic of care
Taken in its extreme, law can be toxic, unnatural and unfeeling. It reminds me of the case of the mother with her baby still in womb dying on an operation table, but due to religious reasons refused to undergo a caesarian delivery. The mother is dying and so too the baby unless this procedure is performed. The doctors applied to the court for an injunction to perform the caesarian. The order was granted to forcefully use restraints on the mother to perform this caesarian against her will. The mother, however, eventually gave birth naturally before the order was served.
It is a metaphor of that unnatural imposition of the law...that external force imposing itself on humanity and at times stifling the opportunity for our own humanity to spring forth the beauty of our existence. This gap between law and reality, between institutions and humanity can only be brought closer into alignment by what I will describe as an ethic of care. Judges are making that shift to develop this ethic of care.
As an institution we are finding creative ways to deliver social justice. We are exploring models of practice such as mediation and judicial settlement that are more relationally engaged, less adversarial, more psychologically beneficial, and more capable of producing non-exploitative outcomes.
We are seeing now an emergence of a new legal mindset, one which encourages dialogue and empathic engagement, which is better able to secure the sorts of peaceable resolutions to legal disputes that individuals most desire. But this ethic of care is one that should permeate every level of society. It must dominate our relationship in our family life.
Mediation Month
In our first week in mediation month, we will be looking at our family life. Families are now going through a radical transformation. The mother is no longer in the traditional role of the caregiver. The disputes between young couples. If we have an ethic of care we will understand the needs of the husband the wife and the child. That the child's future depends upon weaning on the milk of compassion and co-operation, not the poison of violence and hate.
An ethic of care in our communities will see stronger communities finding ways to creatively resolve disputes, creating safe zones for its members to talk, to communicate, to deal constructively with issues facing the community.
To step into the lives of its constituents to counsel and advise, and to be that village that once raised children. An ethic of care will see us be more compassionate for our environment. For companies in our communities it calls upon them to contribute to the development of communities, to engage in acts of compassionate capitalism.
We will focus on mediation in communities in our second week. What will such an ethic of care do for our teachers, lawyers, doctors, politicians? Our institutions will continue to fail us if they remain unreceptive to this ethic of care. An ethic of care will see us re-think our view of criminality. Not to adopt a we-and-them approach which only see us isolating ourselves in ghettoes of gated communities with a false sense of security. Hoping that the dens of vice will burn itself out.
Our problem with crime is that we have adopted an elitist approach of we and them. Speaking from our experience, criminality was viewed as collateral damage, the preserve of a select few miscreants, so that if law abiding citizens simply avoid the hot spots we can ignore the problem. It was a view taken some years ago to our detriment, leading right to our doorstep to the bloody assassination of our sister Dana Seetahal, a champion of restorative justice and mediation in the criminal process.
Crime is not a banner that is placed on the lamp posts to define a hot spot or cold spot. It is a societal deficiency. It is not their problem, it is our problem. It is a society in conflict, and if we do not take leadership roles in transforming this conflict it will envelop our societies and create a new culture of zombies, unfeeling souls feeding on each other to survive, the antithesis of community. That is not what an ethic of care calls for. It calls for understanding our common bond of humanity. If we want to put an end to recividism in this society we must take a more mature look at our offenders. They too must be equipped to understand their actions to be engaged in a process of healing, and for reintegration of both the victim and the offender in the community.
With this ethic of care we can overcome evil and attain peace. Peace must not be seen as some esoteric surreal concept. It is very much a prerequisite for nation building and productivity. In the Global Peace Index the economic impact of violence on the global economy was US$14.3 trillion in 2014, which represents 13.4 per cent of world GDP. This is equivalent to the combined economies of Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. If global violence were to decrease by ten per cent uniformly, an additional US$1.43 trillion would effectively be added to the world economy each year.
This is more than six times the total value of Greece's bailout and loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank (ECB), and other Eurozone countries combined:
"The benefits of peace extend beyond the absence of violence. This also includes the creation of institutions and structures that encourage greater resilience and foster human development. "Encouraging peace through the development of the appropriate attitudes, institutions and structures which create and sustain peaceful societies both reduces violence containment expenditure and supports the optimum environment for human potential to flourish."
The Report continued: "Humanity is facing challenges unparalleled in its history. The most urgent are global in nature, such as climate change, ever decreasing bio-diversity and natural resources, increasing migration and overpopulation..., finding solutions to these unprecedented challenges fundamentally requires new thinking...Peace is an essential prerequisite; without peace, it will not be possible to achieve the levels of cooperation, trust and inclusiveness necessary to solve our challenges, let alone empower the international institutions and organisations necessary to address them...this effort is complex and calls for a shift to new ways of thinking about peace.
"The global village is engaged in thinking about peace in an active and innovative way. We are quickly being underdeveloped if we are unable to create the peaceful environment to deal with the more serious challenges facing our society such as global warming, alternative, energy, health and education."
'Peace begins with me'
An ethic of care means that peace must begin with me. For this reason, it is important that we understand that we can empower ourselves. We can be the advocates of peace and the agents of change. As a people we must change, we must become more human. The indigenous Maori of New Zealand have a traditional greeting which is not the shaking of hands but the rubbing of the forehead and noses together. It's a beautiful symbol of our interconnectivity, that human touch which I think we have lost but which is within us. What can this community do to empower itself to make peace cities? As an agent of change we at the Mediation Board challenge the churches to reach out to the broken homes, to challenged youth, comfort the victim, to understand the offender, to reintegrate them into a society...into a more productive relationship. Not to accept our culture of hate and indifference. Not to persist in lateral thinking, that if it is so in the rest of the world then it has to be so in T&T. To become leaders in peacemaking. Let us think what can we do differently. To achieve social justice we have to realise our ability to heal our own wounds to make peace with our neighbour, to create the environment for peace and to creatively and responsibly assert our rights by accommodating the needs of all. This calls for the sacrifice of self and egos for an ethic of care and a deeper understanding of our common humanity.
Rabindranath Tagore, that famous Indian poet and philosopher reminds us that:
"I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
a new country is revealed with its wonders."
He was talking about regeneration. We have it within ourselves and in our own creativity to recreate, to regenerate, and when the old worlds of the mediocre, unfeeling world die on our tongues that new melodies of a collaborative compassionate co-existence may leap forth. It is the essence of change agents that we can rethink our purpose, imagine "what if...." and breathe life to a vision of achieving social justice, and where old tracks were lost a new country will be revealed with its wonders.