World Mediation Summit

Immediately preceding the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service’s 50^th Anniversary observance, the Service hosted the first-ever World Mediation Summit, bringing together top officials from 16 of the world’s 20 national mediation agencies in Washington, D.C. to share experiences, ideas and knowledge. The summit included plenary sessions and workshops addressing the varied roles and responsibilities of mediation agencies and labor mediators throughout the world, and information-sharing about mediation and conflict resolution in nations with very different labor-management systems.

Several of these national mediation organizations were patterned after the U.S. model (created by Congress in 1947) and others were established with technical assistance from FMCS. Mediation leaders from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Poland and South Africa participated in the World Summit. Government, business and labor officials from 17 other national also attended the two-day conference.

The Hungarian Ministry of Labor, in an effort to promote collective bargaining during the transition from a command economy to a free market economy, decided to establish a Mediation Service. With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and U.S. Department of Labor, and sponsorship by the International Labor Organization, the Hungarians contracted with FMCS to provide two rounds of basic mediation training to nearly 100 potential mediators.