Reframing Peace Mediation

With speaker Owen Frazer, Senior Advisor Conflict Transformation, Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation

Owen Frazer, former PhD student at IDD, will present his book Reframing Peace Mediation: Overcoming Negotiation Impasses in El Salvador. The book is based on his PhD thesis, which won the Development Studies Association PhD thesis prize for 2023. It explains how facilitative mediators, those without material leverage, contribute to progress in peace negotiations.

While existing theories of mediation have offered suggestions about what a mediator should get parties to do to reach an agreement, the puzzle that has remained is: how does a mediator get parties to do what is prescribed? The book argues that a communication perspective is key to understanding facilitative mediation and that framing is the main mechanism by which facilitative mediation functions. Based on an empirical analysis of the United Nations mediation in El Salvador between 1990 and 1992, the work breaks new ground by uncovering three underlying mechanisms that explain how a mediator can get their framing adopted by the negotiating parties, thereby advancing the negotiations. The book offers a novel theory of facilitative mediation as framing and an innovative methodological approach that focuses on negotiation impasses to study the process of how negotiations progress.

Biography

Since 2021, Owen Frazer has been Senior Advisor Conflict Transformation with Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation, an international development NGO that works in over 30 countries. He has been working on questions of peace and conflict since beginning his career in development cooperation with Oxfam GB in 2002. He subsequently worked for several years as a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross before moving into the field of international mediation support, assisting Swiss government efforts to transform social and political conflicts. A certified mediator with an MA in conflict resolution and a PhD from the University of Birmingham, he is an experienced trainer and facilitator and author of several practitioner-focused publications on conflict transformation. 

The IDD Guest Seminar Series brings scholars and practitioners working on international development to the University of Birmingham to share their latest research and ideas. All seminars are open to staff, students, and the general public.