The USAID Rule of Law Program promotes the use of court-annexed mediation and seeks to raise awareness of mediation among the public and legal professionals in Georgia. To serve this purpose, the Program has initiated a series of capacity-building programs on mediation with different stakeholders across the country.

From March 21-26, 2023, the Program conducted trainings for consultants and lawyers of the Legal Aid Service (LAS) Imereti bureau.

The training for consultants (March 21-22) focused on the essence and principles of mediation and included discussions on the types of cases under the mandate of LAS that would be suitable for mediation. The training culminated in a mock referral exercise for participants who role-played a scenario where their beneficiaries were advised about the potential of resolving a dispute through mediation.

The purpose of the training for lawyers (March 24-25) was different for two reasons: LAS lawyers often represent their beneficiaries in negotiations, and they often act as representatives/defenders of the rights of the child in family disputes. This role gives them a unique opportunity to apply interest-based negotiation and mediation skills in these negotiations to help their clients achieve outcomes suitable to their interests and, most importantly, to the best interests of the children. The training with lawyers was longer and focused on building the skills of active listening, exploration, and bargaining, which the lawyers can apply in their practice.

The lawyers were particularly impressed by the power of open-ended questions and active listening as they tried to persuade the opposing party in a mock role-play designed specifically for a family dispute scenario over the right of custody over a child and other matrimonial issues.

A total of thirty lawyers and consultants attended the training and learned that court-annexed as well as out-of-court (private) mediation is now available in many parts of Georgia, including Western Georgia. They also discussed the details of who the mediators are, how they are chosen for a specific dispute, and what are the procedures, timelines, and costs of mediation.

The training was led by Program’s expert, Sopo Chachava, who is also a Board Member of LAS, and the USAID Rule of Law Program ADR Advisor, Sophie Tkemaladze. Similar training for LAS consultants and lawyers will be held in Eastern Georgia in the coming months.

Between these two LAS training, the Program's representative and expert held a meeting with representatives of local NGOs in the Kutaisi region. The aim of the meeting was to inform them about mediation and how court-annexed as well as private mediation operates so that these NGOs could advise their beneficiaries and citizens of the same. The program invited Kutaisi accredited mediators to join the meeting, which gave everyone the opportunity to get to know each other, build trust and confidence in the process.

Some of the attendee lawyers emphasized that they had noticed during the last several weeks that judges of Kutaisi City Court frequently try to persuade parties about mediation at a preparatory hearing, while local mediators happily reported that four of them had been assigned the first cases to mediate. This is positive news to some extent and can be credited to the Program's earlier efforts of raising the capacity and confidence of judges in the mediation process.