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Global Mediation and Reconciliation Services The Global Mediation and Reconciliation Service Launched by Virginia Swain at the Hague Appeal for Peace in May 1999, the Global Mediation and Reconciliation Service (GMRS) offers restorative and preventive peace building through consultation, training services to develop Reconciliation Leadership, and custom-designed interventions for global change. Created to commemorate the International Decade of Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001-2010), the GMRS had its beginnings in a conference paper jointly prepared by Ms. Swain and Dr. Joseph Preston Baratta, who founded the Center for Global Community and World Law together. The GMRS shares the vision articulated by the world’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and approved by the UN General Assembly: to create an international community committed to making peace through nonviolent means. The mission of the GMRS is to create environments that promote peaceful coexistence. Leaders and peacemakers are mentored to address the cycle of violence. The GMRS provides consultation, mediation, conciliation and training services for leaders ready to work on building strategic, cross-sectoral alliances to work through issues of violence. Its services are based on a theoretical and practical approach to reconciliation with three starting points: relationship building, encounter activities to express grief, loss and the anger that accompanies experiencing injustice, and innovative reconciliation techniques that exist outside the mainstream of international political traditions. The GMRS grew out of nearly a decade of conflict resolution research and development undertaken by Ms. Swain. What is innovative about her approach is her emphasis on a collaborative process which involves and engages those most affected by the conflict to become stakeholders in the resolution. Her training to promote coexistence and reconciliation leadership teaches leaders how to facilitate safe environments to resolve the complex problems of the 21st century and thus enable the world to acknowledge differences without violence. The Peacebuilding Process of Reconciliation to Develop Political Will Ms. Swain introduced a Peacebuilding Process of Reconciliation to Develop Political Will (PPR) at the “Celebration of the Children of the World,” an event she organized at the United Nations in 1992 to unite the UN community and build solidarity for the plight of street children. Presentations and implementations of the PPR since then have tackled such issues as peacemaking versus peacekeeping, racism and gender relations. A complete list in chronological order can be found here.
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