Integrative Mediation: A ‘Bottom-Up Approach’ to Peacebuilding

This is a reading copy of a paper I first presented at the IACM Annual Conference in July 2008, drawn from three years of inter-community mediation work in Kosovo and Macedonia. It introduced integrative mediation, a bottom-up method that keeps ownership of the peace process in local hands while combining inter-community mediation, consultation, interactive professional training, research, and advocacy into a single holistic approach.

This version corrects typographical errors, standardizes Balkan place names, and cleans up the bibliography. The content is unchanged from the version of record. It is offered as a convenience for readers, not as the citable version.

I published this work in 2008 as Dr. Juan Diaz. I write today as Juan Diaz-Prinz. The ideas set out here run through everything I have done since, including my forthcoming handbook on peace mediation, where this early method grows into a full practitioner’s approach.