Mediation and Cultural Values in the Great Lakes Region

"If it takes heroes to make war, it takes humans to make peace".

This truth inspires the idea of creating professional mediation centers in the Great Lakes Region, with particular emphasis on mediation in schools.

This is the perspective to which this work would like to open.

This book is the result of a research paper written for the University Diploma of Mediator at IFOMENE.

It is an analytical and comparative study of the cultural values of gacaca, ubuntu and ubushingantahe in combination with mediation.

A harmonious combination of law and communication, mediation would gain more by being impregnated with the cultural values of the peoples in whose environment it is practiced.

The personalist philosophy of ubuntu in the face of apartheid made possible the "South African miracle" of the Rainbow Nation.

The experience of the gacaca in Rwanda after the genocide proved the urgent need to take seriously African traditional jurisprudence in order to achieve a participatory, integrative, accessible and more human justice.