Podcasts, powerpoints and/or papers from the presentations are available to LEADR members and
'kon gres 2011 participants via a password protected area. Click here >>

Explore conflict from six sides to identify strategies, logistics and cultural awareness that support solid design for culturally sensitive mediations.

As a mediation practitioner, we are ethically bound:

• from providing (legal) advice
• to not encourage parties to bend/change or break laws.
• not to knowingly create an illegal agreement

just for the sake of an outcome.

But what happens when we are asked to mediate conflict involving a whole town or a community where a party has strong cultural and moral obligations to abide by a law that is incompatible under dominant (State) law?

In both urban and non-urban communities in the Northern Territory, it is not uncommon that a party may suggest an obligation such as violent ‘payback’ under customary law to resolve a dispute; whist the other party – such as the police, point out that ‘payback’ is an assault, and therefore a serious offence and will prevent it from occurring.

This workshop will explore how mediators can explore conflict from six sides to design effective and culturally sensitive mediations to manage the incompatibility of the two laws and that focus on keeping the community strong.

With reference to case studies delivered in communities and in the Northern Territory involving high level violence and riots in recent years, this session will identify strategies, logistics and cultural awareness that support solid design for culturally sensitive mediations.

Podcast: Listen to Ippei talk about this session pre-kon gres (6 mins) >>