Mediation Workshops for Guinea Elections

Day One of the Mediation Training in Labé.

Elections give people the opportunity to affect positive change by allowing them to choose their own governing officials. However, elections also open the door to uncertainty and shifts in power, and as such they can be flash points for violence. With its history of violent clashes over political power, the June 2010 presidential elections in Guinea signaled a need for increased local capacity to resolve conflicts in a non-violent manner.

In response to this need, BEFORE, along with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) and the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), funded four workshops throughout Guinea on “Mediation in the Context of Elections.“ The workshops were conducted by MSP – a joint project of swisspeace and CSS ETH-Zurich – and International Alert (IA) and took place in the southeast city of N’zérékoré, the northwest city of Labé, the northeast city of Kankan and the capital city of Conakry in May 2010.

Workshop facilitator and participant in N'Zérékoré.

Over the span of three days, more than one hundred workshop participants familiarized themselves with the legal context of the elections, which included Guinea’s electoral law and constitution, various conflict theories, the workings of election cycles and mediation techniques and methods. Teaching by local, regional and international experts enabled participants to increase their knowledge of conflict analysis and prevention, discuss specific topic-related mediation mechanisms, and learn from the experiences of other African countries in regards to mediation and elections. In so far as the latter is concerned, experts from the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) shared their knowledge on mediation and election projects in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where election-related violence is a focal point in national politics.

The workshop participants were diverse in their background and selected on the basis of their political independence, community reputation and potential to work as mediators and as bridge builders in Guinean society. More than one-fifth of the participants at the first workshop in N’zérékoré were women.

Workshop participants discuss mediation methods in Labé.

Reports of the workshop indicate that local participants would welcome further workshops and trainings. BEFORE’s partners will maintain contact with the workshop participants in order to assess the workshop’s impact. IA will present a report on the results of the workshops to the Guinea Commission Électorale Nationale Indépendante (CENI) to ensure that the mediation training can be integrated in local structures to further the use of mediation mechanisms and skills in Guinea to resolve conflicts.

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