Embracing Mediation: New skills to counter violence in Ethiopia
by Allan Stitt
From the moment our plane touched down and taxied past the burned out hulks of airplanes, I knew this would not be anything like the courses we taught in Canada. “Toto, we’re not in Kansas any more," my wife said. We were in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to teach mediation as part of a CIDA project.
I had received an email about six months earlier, in the summer of 2005, from Sophie Racine of CIDA asking if our company would be interested in teaching Ethiopians about mediation. CIDA was funding a group called the Ethiopia Arbitration and Conciliation Centre (the EACC) to help change the culture of dispute resolution in Ethiopia. Fighting and adversarial litigation was the norm and a group of people at the EACC led by Woubshet Ayele wanted to change that. Sophie had been working in Ethiopia and this was one of her key projects.
Three years earlier, as part of a team from the Canadian Bar Association, I had spoken with some Ethiopian lawyers and judges about Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Woubshet had been in the audience and he decided to give up his law practice to devote himself to bringing ADR to Ethiopia. Sophie learned of Woubshet’s goals and ideals, and saw the potential for cooperative forms of dispute resolution to change the way Ethiopians dealt with each other.
This trip was very different from my last one. Over several days, I met with different groups of people who dealt with construction disputes, labour disputes, family disputes, business disputes, and arbitration. Very few of the 40 or so people I taught each day were lawyers. All had taken a basic mediation course in the past, some just the week before from my partner, Frank Handy, and a colleague of ours, Rick Russell.
Our accommodation at the Sheraton Hotel was probably the most luxurious I have ever experienced. It had five fancy restaurants, a spectacular pool and health club, and every convenience imaginable. The surrounding walls hid the extraordinary poverty that we saw everywhere else in Addis – the AIDS epidemic that is devastating Ethiopia and so many other countries in Africa, and the fact that a working man who made the equivalent of a dollar a day was better off than most in his country.
On a drive to see some of the sights, my wife, Sari, commented that the donkeys we saw up ahead looked like they were carrying heavy loads. It was only when we got closer that we realized it was women. We were told the women did a lot of carrying while the men often sat around and drank coffee.
One of the first challenges for us in the course was the language barrier. Amharic is the primary language but people learn English in the schools. We did not have a translator but were careful to speak slowly so that they could understand. Some people obviously understood better than others, but we could tell by the questions we were asked that everyone was keen and really wanted to learn about mediation.
People who train in mediation know that role-playing is a key tool. We drafted a number of role- plays that we hoped would be culturally sensitive. Our Ethiopian students were not used to role-playing (and were particularly hesitant to play the role of mediator) but were eager to learn and, through the course of each day, became very engaged.
There were numerous examples of culture shock. When we taught Family Mediation, we talked to the group about screening cases for domestic violence. It is fairly well accepted in Canada that, for a mediation relating to the breakup of a marriage, the mediator should first screen the two disputants for a history of spousal abuse. If so, the mediator should use some specific techniques and skills to minimize the likelihood that violence will re-occur. In extreme cases, the mediator may refuse to conduct the mediation.
In Ethiopia, the perspective is quite different. We asked the group what they did when a woman wanted to leave her husband because she was being physically abused. They replied that the advice usually given by lawyers and social workers was to go back to her abusing husband, because if she did not, she would likely have no access to her children and no money to live on. Being abused, they assured us, was better for her than living (or dying) on the street. This is the reality of life in Ethiopia. We knew we could not change a culture in a week and all we could do was our best to make a very small inroad into a culture where violence was accepted.
While we were there, some students protesting at the University were shot and some members of the opposition party were arrested. Ethiopians were looking for a better way to live.
Yet, with all of the violence, the people were absolutely wonderful to us and truly embraced the concept of mediation. To a person, the participants tried to make us feel comfortable and made sure that we had anything we wanted or needed. The concept of mediation was new to them, but they embraced it. They saw this as a beginning – to change from a society of violence to a society of cooperative dealings.
They were fascinated by the idea that disputes could be resolved, in a lot of cases, by people looking at meeting each others’ interests rather than looking for how to exercise power over the other. They told us how much they appreciated what Canada was doing to teach them the skills they needed to resolve disputes quickly and calmly.
Sari and I met some fantastic people who were doing fascinating work. We were in awe of the people in Ethiopia who are so dedicated to helping others, people who really cared and were trying to make Ethiopia a better place. CIDA is really helping the Ethiopian people and making a difference, and we thank them for giving us the chance to be part of what they are doing.
Allan Stitt was a member of the Stitt Feld Handy Group team that went to Ethiopia in December of 2005 as part of a CIDA project. The Stitt Feld Handy Group (www.sfhgroup.com) teaches negotiation and mediation courses in Canada and around the world.
