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Introduction
The goal of this handbook is to enhance the practice of mediation by showing how lessons from individual mediators can be identified and made available both to their home organization (e.g., a foreign ministry, intergovernmental organization, or nongovernmental organization) and to a wider practitioner audience. More particularly, the handbook gives guidance to staff debriefing mediators who are or have been directly involved in peace negotiations.
The focus here is not on self-assessments by the mediators themselves,l nor on evaluations of the mediator's performance by external donors, nor on political or psychological debriefing. Instead, this handbook examines methodological debriefing: that is, interviews conducted with the goal of learning lessons about the mediation method from the experience of a specific mediator that are useful for future mediation processes. Meth- odological debriefing is typically conducted by individuals who have not been directly involved in the mediator's work and who do not seek to judge it but who want to learn the mediator's perspective on what was done and why it was done. Ideally, the mediator will also benefit from the interview by discovering something new through the questions posed, by having the opportunity to recount a challenging experience, or at least by having her or his experiences documented in a structured and objective manner.
Exactly what questions should be asked of the mediator will vary from case to case. In most cases, however, many of the same broad subjects will be of interest to the interviewer. The appendices at the end of this book list a variety of generic questions that target common areas of inquiry. Among the key questions are the following:
If these questions are asked in a way that encourages candid self-reflection, the responses they elicit will add to the growing store of useful k