How Mediation can help achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

It is worth pointing out that the attainment of these 17 SDG objectives commits not only governments, states, international organizations and public institutions, but also challenges civil society and all its actors.

"Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It will never be achieved with passivity and quietism," said Dorothy Thomson.

In September 2015, at the United Nations summit, 193 countries approved the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the entire International Community and included them in their Agenda for the year 2030.

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It is worth pointing out that the attainment of these 17 SDG objectives commits not only governments, states, international organizations and public institutions, but also challenges civil society and all its actors.

What can mediation bring in this context?

Mediation, as a methodology and collaborative process for the resolution of conflicts, is a fundamental tool in the development of the culture of peace. Likewise, the mediation professionals, as relevant actors to generate a peaceful dialogue between the parties and build facilitating spaces for agreements, are in an optimal place to promote actions of high impact in the achievement of most of the aforementioned objectives, but without a doubt, it is in the achievement of objective 16 of "peacebuilding", where mediation can deploy all its capacity to transform and improve the lives of people.

Specifically SDG 16 proposes "Promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, facilitating access to justice for all people and building effective and inclusive institutions that are accountable", and focuses on collaborating in the search for solutions to reduce violence and corruption on the one hand, and to promote access to justice, guaranteeing an inclusive social collaboration at all times.

Based on its own theoretical foundation, mediation has different functions through which it can collaborate in the achievement of said objective 16 and in the subsequent social transformation. Of them, we highlight three:

• The function of conflict prevention and construction of a non-confrontational relational dynamic.
• Role of conflict resolution through dialogue, the search for common interests and the achievement of satisfactory agreements for all parties involved.
• Educational function for people, organizations, and society in general, in the culture of respect for different points of view, nonviolent communication, collaboration, and peacebuilding.

Once identified the general objective and the functions that mediation can provide, the task of the mediators, from now and for the next years, will be to reflect on how to carry out the actions that, little by little, allow us to reach this more than necessary challenge.