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Mediation Specialist, USAID/ABA/CEELI assigned to Bulgaria assisting Minister of Justice and Mediation Steering Committee in drafting and implementing ethical, procedural, educational and certification rules and regulations pursuant to the Mediation Act of 12.2005. Conducted advanced mediation training. (April - July 2005)
Bulgaria Articles
MUSINGS FROM OF A MEDIATOR GONE GLOBAL
I boarded the international flight in Newark, NJ. Twenty-two hours later, I
looked out the plane’s window as it headed down a wide open plain,
surrounded on either side by mountains almost as beautiful as the Alps.
Ahead, lay Sofia, Bulgaria. I pondered in those moments how I had arrived
here.
Only a few months before, like many Americans who try to stay involved in
the political system, I had become quite frustrated. Although my mediation
practice was going well, I could see no way to make a meaningful personal
contribution back to society. Making political contributions, attending
dinners with identical menus, listening to hackneyed speeches, just didn’t
seem satisfy me. I wanted something more. I wanted to make even the
smallest difference.
So, I began a search on the internet, seeking options that could use my
experience and skills.. As a long time member of the American Bar
Association, I discovered its ABA/CEELI program. CEELI is a public service
project of the American Bar Association designed to advance the rule of law
by supporting the legal reform process in Central and Eastern Europe and the
Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. Through its
work, CEELI helps build the legal infrastructure that is indispensable to
strong, self-supporting, democratic, free market systems. One component of
building a strong free market system, as espoused especially by the European
Union, is alternative dispute resolution programs.
It sounded great for volunteer work and I applied. I was asked to DC for an
interview in early December 2005. At this stage in my career, I couldn’t
leave my dispute resolution practice for a long period of time. So, I didn’t
expect them to assign me a position, given that they were seeking volunteers
for a long-term period, one year.
In March 2005, I had planned my trip to Vienna to be an arbitrator in the
Willem Vis Arbitration Moot, attended by over 120 law schools world-wide.
Afterwards, we had planned to travel to Spain to visit my son, Gage, who
lives on the Spanish Costa del Sol. Those plans quickly changed when I got
a call offering me a position in Bulgaria as a mediation/legal specialist
for three months, starting in mid April. I immediately accepted.
CEELI’s office in Bulgaria is the first one created in 1991. Bulgaria is
CEELI’s poster child. As part of a broad portfolio designed to assist
Bulgaria in enhancing its rule of law, USAID funds the Attorney’s
Professional Development Initiative (APDI) through its implementer the
American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative
(ABA/CEELI). APDI supports developments in the legal profession in Bulgaria
in three general categories: bar development, mediation and clinical
education. CEELI Bulgaria has succeeded in all of these categories. As a
result, in 2007, Bulgaria is slated to enter the European Union.
I was coming to Bulgaria to assist in the development of mediation. And now
I was about to land in a city, which, by many accounts, still raggedly wore
the recent cultural and political remnants of communism. I wondered how
the transition from communism had affected not only the political landscape
but also the psyche of the Bulgarian people. After all, in 1989, after the
Berlin wall fell, the communists simply pulled out en masse, leaving the
country to struggle economically, forcing Bulgarians into long bread lines.
I arrived on a Saturday and was picked up by a person from the office, Rado,
and a driver of a van. Together, they struggled to get my four heavy
suitcases up four flights of stairs to my apartment. Still bleary eyed from
jet lag, Monday morning I met the Mark Lassman, the Director of the office,
outside my apartment building that faced a park and Sofia’s huge,
monolithic, cultural complex built by the communists. Mark and I began what
was to become my daily walk through Sofia to the ABA/CEELI office. I liked
him immediately. As I was to learn, his most endearing quality was to give
the Bulgarian staff the rewards and recognition for successes of the office.
Americans would leave in 2007 when Bulgaria joined the European Union. As he
explained, and I agreed, it was critical to building lasting achievements
that the Bulgarian staff attorneys take leadership roles so that they could
refine and continue the rule of law long after we had gone.
This philosophy was to govern my varied and extensive experiences in
Bulgarian mediation, the first of which began the day I arrived at the
office. The Bulgarian people and their commitment to mediation broadened
my view of life and enriched me in ways I could never have envisioned.
Walking to work in downtown Sofia on my first day as a Mediation Specialist,
was, in itself, quite interesting. The city of Sofia, unlike most of the
beautiful Bulgarian countryside, is not an immediately appealing sight. My
new boss, Mark Lassman, Country Director of ABA/CEELI (Central and Eastern
Europe Law Initiative) in Bulgaria, walking with me, suggested I watch my
feet as I walked. Sofia has many stray city dogs that apparently covet
otherwise unadorned areas of the sidewalks. So do cars. They are parked on
almost all of the sidewalks, making navigation circuitous. In Sofia, there
is no pedestrian right of way. Therefore, one carefully must look up from
the sidewalks to avoid cars when crossing streets. The office building was
vintage communist-era construction and the old WWII single-person (at most
2-person) elevator was loud and wobbly. Riding it was a daunting experience,
but better than walking up five flights of stairs in dim stairwell.
I had part of a large office with a vintage Dell computer, and lots of
windows. The computer worked slowly but fine, and a few strategically
placed flowers brightened the sparsely-furnished space.
Within moments of my arrival, I met Biliana, a young Bulgarian attorney in
charge of mediation matters. Over the course of the next few months, my
respect and admiration for this woman grew daily. Attractive, bright and
articulate, she is passionately committed to mediation in Bulgaria. Almost
single-handedly, she led the cause that resulted in the Bulgarian Parliament
’s enactment of a national Mediation Act, one of the most comprehensive and
first of its kind in Europe. Her practiced practicality and patience
enabled a large and disparate group of Bulgarian professionals to ultimately
promulgate ethical and procedural rules of conduct, educational standards
and rules for registration (certification). All of these the Minister of
Justice approved. Having this national Mediation Act, and the comprehensive
rules and regulations supporting it, establishes a unique dispute resolution
system for Bulgaria when it joins the European Union in 2007.
Literally within a few hours of meeting Biliana, members of the Minster of
Justice’s appointed Working Group began arriving at the office. They were
arriving to go over their plans for a five-day trip to Netherlands where
they would study the Dutch mediation system. I was introduced by Biliana.
I must not have mangled my greeting, “dobro utro” (Bulgarian for “good
morning”) too badly; I was met with responsive warm smiles and nods of
appreciation. I thought to myself that these successful and highly-regarded
attorneys, university professors and businessmen and women certainly had one
thing in common, a natural warmth and likeability. I was later to
understand that these traits are common to most of the Bulgarians, certainly
to those I met.
The members of this national Working Group (“WG”) are a varied prestigious
professional group, hand-picked by the Minister of Justice to assist in
promulgating educational, ethical and procedural rules. Working for about
12 months prior to my arrival, the WG had prepared working drafts for
ethical and procedural rules, educational requirements and rules governing
the Uniform Register (the Bulgarian certification process). During those
next few days when most of the WG traveled to Holland, I read everything I
could about the history and current mediation laws, both in Europe and
Bulgaria.
As assigned, I then began reviewing background documents in order to prepare
comments on the WG’s mediation working drafts. Unlike certain courts in the
United States, the Bulgarian Mediation Act requires that mediation is
voluntary. Therefore, the current model of mediation in Bulgarian provides
that in district and regional courts that have agreed to refer mediation,
the judge, in the first hearing on a case, neutrally explains to the parties
what mediation is and how the parties can use it if they choose. Once the
parties have settled, they appear back before the judge to explain and
formally agree to the settlement. In this context, the challenge was to
determine which American mediation concepts worked best. I attempted to
integrate ethical, procedural, educational, certification and enforcement
concepts premised upon American mediation jurisprudence into a Bulgarian
judicial system, which is not a common-law system.
Over the course of the several weeks reviewing my comments, various members
of the WG could get rather unruly at times. I observed heated debates over
what seemed like inane details. I pondered the passion these people
articulated in paving the logistical way for mediation in their country. I
wondered if I had recently seen such passion about mediation in our country.
It had been a while. Certainly, as an initial member of the first Dispute
Resolution Board in the early 1990s, we intensely debated our new rules and
regulations. But I was hard-pressed to recall the degree of passion WG
members routinely expressed in their meetings.
Over the course of about two months, the WG, led by the ever-patient
Biliana, and I worked to complete the final drafts. Despite some
disappointments in the government’s reluctance to provide enforcement
regulations, the rules are strong, well-developed and conceptually akin to
many rules used in the United States and other progressive members of the
European Union. In late June 2005, the Minister of Justice approved the WG’s
submission of formal Ethical and Procedural Rules, Educational Requirements,
and the Uniform Register provisions. You can find Bulgarian Mediation Act
and all of its rules and regulations on my web-site, the Balkan Page, at
www.lynncole.com.
Each time I worked with members of the WG, I had the satisfaction of knowing
that others had listened, often integrating my ideas, sometime not. I could
take no ownership of the result. However, I keenly appreciated that the
process was a productive one and that my suggestions were analyzed and
synthesized by the WG. But the sense of being a part of designing something
important to a society didn’t end there.
I also was tasked with assisting in opening new mediation centers and
conducting advanced mediation training. If Biliana is the activist architect
of mediation, Zoya is the wise builder. Zoya is a warm woman, having
obtained her law degree during the communist era. She has eyes that always
smile and she is a natural-born mediator. Zoya says she has “found her
calling” and her passion shows each time she speaks to others about anything
involved in mediation. Zoya and her judicial colleague, Stanislav, are
responsible for forming the BAARD (Bulgarian Association for Alternative
Resolution Dispute) Center, the first mediation center in Bulgaria located
in Plovdiv. A few hours from Sofia, Plovdiv is a dynamic city humming with
entrepreneurial activities. It is the proud site of two preserved Roman
amphitheatres.
Biliana and Zoya and I traveled to various offices of chief judges,
encouraging court-related mediation. We found many regional and district
court judges very receptive. For those otherwise indifferent (and in a few
cases, hostile) judges, Biliana’s and Zoya’s enthusiasm for mediation was
contagious. I observed Zoya’s mediation skills literally transform the
opinion of one recalcitrant judge from doubt and dislike into outright
enthusiastic acceptance.
I predict that mediation in Bulgaria will be highly successful in a
beautiful country where sadly there is still much poverty and incomes are
low, despite hard work. For many decades, the Bulgarian people lived under
a system that actively stifled individual motivations and thwarted creative
ideas. Mediation, because of the dynamics inherent in the process, will
work to transform this country into a thriving democracy in the European
Union. During communism, mediation was much distrusted as a process: the
communist party member met with the disputants and simply told them what to
do. It was as simple as that. As Zoya describes her mediations, something
much more dynamic is happening to individuals in an ever-increasing number
of successful mediations. I agree. For the first time in their lives,
Bulgarians are learning and embracing the fact that they have personal
control over resolving a dispute. They make a personal decision affecting
their lives, not someone else. Once they learn they have this control, they
begin to listen to the other side and determine options that might work if
the other side will agree. A give and take develops. In learning to listen
and articulate options, inherent to the process is taking responsibility for
one’s actions. Taking personal responsibility for one’s acts is empowering.
Zoya reports this process happening repeatedly; some of the same people are
returning to mediation a second time or more. Enough of these individuals
help change, over time, the attitude, tenor, and communication abilities of
a community. Thus, the community’s strength increases. When enough
communities embrace these dynamics, a nation is empowered. I see this in
Bulgaria’s future.
Related Links
Photo Forum has
a really good tour.
Take a look when you have the time!
Sofia, Bulgaria: An Ancient City That Wears Its History Well
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