Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict

Introduction: William Ury explains how outsiders can facilitate the development and coordination of many different third-sider roles. This he calls "meta mediation."

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Meta Mediation
William Ury
Director of the Global Negotiation Project, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School

Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

So he [Nelson Mandela] very definitely is a model third sider and again he is an insider and he was helped by the outsiders and that's what we need the job of the mediator and people with mediation talent vis a vis the third side is often to play one of the roles that need to be played, one of the instruments that need to be played, but also we increasingly need to play the role of what I call the "meta-mediator," which is to use your skills of facilitation and bring different people together to orchestrate or help orchestrate or bring together the different voices of the third side, from within the society, from outside the society, to bring the police, the military, the church people, the women's groups, the business - to bring all the different elements of society that really will make up bring them into dialogue with each other in order to make a powerful third side.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Featured Links
Organizations Making Noteworthy Contributions to Efforts to Promote More Constructive Conflict

Groupe Urgence, Rehabilitation, Developpement (URD)

Other Resources from
Beyond Intractability

Interview With Mari Fitzduff
A leading peacebuilder from Northern Ireland, Mari talks about her work around the world transforming religious and ethnic conflicts.

Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Int'l Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
1985 Nobel Peace Laureate

Beyond Intractability Version IV
Copyright © 2003-2007 The Beyond Intractability Project
Beyond Intractability is a Registered Trademark of the University of Colorado
Project Acknowledgements

The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors
c/o Conflict Information Consortium (Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado
Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309
Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact