Description: 

Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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For more than 30 years, Grace Wanjiru Mburu has been working on peaceful conflict resolution as a children‘s officer, private and court-accredited mediator. Based in Kenya—see https://gmmediators.com/#—she also has dealt with specialized cases such as orphans of justice, juvenile delinquency or large organizational and traditional conflicts. She is a member of Suluhu Mediation Center and the Court Annexed Mediation in Kenya. Her broad perspective in this interview—from justice for children to organizational dynamics to commercial matters—provides an interesting perspective for mediators everywhere. Mburu reveals what she believes makes mediation effective where a justice system is powerless, and she provides observations and advice on conflict resolution from the community to the court case.

The interview was conducted on Zoom on July 26, 2024, by Karoline Caesar, a certified mediator in Bonn, Germany [see www.karolinecaesar. de.] She was joined by co-interviewers Kenneth Indeche and Angela Waichinga, who are certified mediators in Kenya, and members of MTI Mediation Training Institute of East Africa. The Mburu interview is part of a series of interviews conducted by Caesar to portray mediators who are bridging Western and African methodology to show the strengths of combined methods, and to give more visibility to mediators. Caesar writes, “I think more people should embrace the attitude of a mediator to make this world more peaceful, so we need to get to know mediators—their thoughts, beliefs, [and] experiences mediating.”