Community mediation experiences in Brazil: theoretical and practical challenges

 Ariane Gontijo L. Leandro[1]

 Summary: We know that the idea of ​​mediation is currently identified as an ancient practice, as it has always been common among people and peoples since ancient history. Mediation has always been an aid to people in understanding themselves and others, based on human behavior based on interrelationships and their different positions and interests. Nowadays, its expressions and modalities are wide, whether they are formalized or not, in the business, judicial, family, criminal, school areas, among others, however, for the present text we present some of the experiences of community mediation implemented in the Brazilian context, especially from the influences arising from the democratization of law and access to justice movements, we highlight the trajectories of these practices and the main concepts, principles and methodologies. We aim to present the existing convergences and divergences in the conceptual and practical field, as well as the main advances and challenges found in the field of community mediation.

Key words: community mediation; human rights; practical experiences;

Summary: We know that the idea of ​​mediation is identified today as an ancient practice, which has always been common among people and people since ancient history. Mediation is always provided as an aid for people in understanding a mismo and others, as a principle of human behavior guided by interrelations and their different positions and interests. Today, its expressions are extensive and procedures, if it formalizes the no, in business, legal, family, school, penal areas, among others, without embargo, for this text that will present the organizational arrangement adopted exclusively by some experiences of community mediation deployed in the Brazilian context, especially the influences derived from the circulation of the democratization of the right and the access to justice, highlight the trayectories of these practices and the main concepts, the principles and methodologies. The objective was to present the convergences and divergences in the conceptual and practical field, and also the main achievements and challenges in the pursuit of community mediation.

Key words: community mediation; human rights; practical experiences;

 

  1. Introduction

            This text presents 05 community mediation practices developed in different institutions over the last two decades in Brazil. We know that many initiatives were implemented within the most diverse fields, locations and regions, from practices within the Judiciary to experiences arising from organized civil society, but for this article we highlight 05 of these initiatives. [2]. The experiences are as follows: i) the Mediation and Citizenship Centers of the Pólos de Cidadania Program, linked to the Law School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais; ii) the Balcão de Direitos, implemented at the time by the non-governmental organization Viva Rio; (iii) the Community Justice Program, originated and linked to the Federal District Court of Justice; (iv) the Popular Mediation and Guidance Offices on Rights, through the initiative of the non-governmental organization Juspopuli da Bahia; and, v) the Conflict Mediation Program, linked to the Minas Gerais State Government's violence prevention policy. Our objective is to present some reflections on the process of democratization of rights and the development of these experiences implemented in different institutional contexts, highlighting their main similarities and differences, aiming to present understandings about community mediation.

  1. Web

            The experiences of community mediation currently in Brazil have very unique contexts of intervention, most of them are implemented in regions characterized by social vulnerabilities, lack of access to public goods and fundamental rights, high incidence of violence and crime rates, mainly , intentional homicides, among other historical aggravating factors that affect some regions of the country. However, an important aspect about the vision that one has in relation to community mediation is that, although most of the experiences have a focus of intervention in these mentioned regions, their perspective/vision appears in a broader and more integrated way, as we will see in from the experiences that will be reported.

            Before approaching the experiences of community mediation, it is necessary to present some paths on the democratization process in the Brazilian context. According to Leandro (2012), national programs aimed at reducing bureaucracy in the justice system were implemented in 1970, and in the 1980s and 1990s ample judicial bodies were created, mainly aimed at the low-income population in Brazil, leading scholars to reflect on such processes. . Studies on the subject were related to factors (internal and external to institutions and cultures in the Brazilian reality) that could facilitate or hinder the access of these social segments to justice (Falcão, 1981; D'Araújo, 1996; Junqueira, 1996). ; Amorin, 2008).

In the Brazilian case, Law No. 7.244, of November 07, 1984, created the Special Small Claims Courts and later, with Law No. 9.099 of September 26, 1995, the Special Civil and Criminal Courts were implemented. With American influence, the Special Small Claims Courts, for example, allowed the assessment of conflicts in an extrajudicial instance related to the civil sphere, instituting, above all, the mediation of conflicts between the parties involved, which, for the first time, could be appreciated under the presidency of a magistrate. The Special Small Claims Courts acted in cases of low economic value, connected with civil justice matters, guided by the criteria of simplicity, speed, informality and economy. When studied by D'Araújo (1996), in the 1990s, some problems were noticed in the operationalization of this practice: (I) the duration of the proceedings was long, contrary to expectations; (Ii) the wide variation of agreements by location/region, which also did not express clear solutions when it came to, for example, conciliations; (Iii) the profile of applicants and defendants, highlighting a higher percentage of “defendants” as companies (legal entities), and among individuals who “were being sued”, most were from the lowest socioeconomic strata; (Iv) other issues observed are related to the type of action/demand, demonstrating a wide difference between groups/social strata, with the majority of neighborhood and community conflicts between strata of lower purchasing power, and demands on consumption, merchandise and condominiums more common among the middle and upper strata; and the last aspect (V) was related to the value/cost of the action.

D'Araújo (1996) identified in that period - despite the advances in the distribution of Justice and the expansion of access to rights - that they were still the "most educated", the "more informed", the richest social groups/strata, who “enforced” their rights, and who were the least favored in education, income and knowledge, the ones who least enjoy them. A point highlighted by the author is that the poor, in that context, while “using less” of this “access to justice” apparatus, were the “most prosecuted”, that is, among other areas of justice (criminal ), they (the poor) are also sentenced with the greatest penalties.

We know that this set of situations is related to the historical influence on the development of citizenship in Brazil, Carvalho (1996; 2004), for example, in an analysis of citizenship in the country in the XNUMXth century, found a potential for population participation that did not it had channels of expression within the institutional framework and did not even have the structural conditions to articulate an alternative framework. For the author, the characteristics of the Brazilian colonial period left permanent marks on the national culture and strong influences on the form of construction and participation of citizenship in the country.

Another analysis of the characteristics that influenced the judicial institutions dedicated to conflict management in Brazil is the comparative study by Amorim (2008) on the Brazilian and North American cases. The author points out points of contradiction between the “judicial courts” of these two systems. She points out that the concern with a justice system that could offer greater access to rights by the poor population in Brazil emerged at the end of the 70's with the creation of the aforementioned National Debureaucratization Program, which idealized a justice proposal aimed at granting rights to Brazilians historically excluded from access to justice. In such a perspective, the judicial administration of conflicts could be developed by the citizens themselves, as long as it takes the form of actions of low complexity or even of low financial value. This proposal was based on experiences from other countries, such as the Small Claims Courts in the United States. This comparison considers/chooses the United States considering that that model of court influenced the way of conceiving justice for the poor Brazilians and, also, because it is common to find Brazilian legal institutes like those of the North Americans. In agreement with Amorim (2008), we understand that there are considerable differences between the models adopted by the two countries, especially due to the specificity of the historical and cultural traditions of each country. It is noteworthy that, even with this North American influence, Brazilian Courts gained their own character, in order to adapt to the specificities of the Brazilian legal system; from these differences, the modalities of judicial assistance granted to citizens by the justice of each of the countries result, such as the procedural conception itself, where distinctions regarding the conceptions of the guarantee of due legal process stand out (Amorim, 2008: 178).

A study that deals with the relationship between the population of Minas Gerais and access to justice is that of Batittucci and Santos (2010). The authors carried out a research on the Special Criminal Courts of Belo Horizonte (JECRIM-BH), proposing among its objectives, to analyze the organizational constraints of this institution and the characteristics of the victims and agents of the processes judged during the year 2006. The main elements found is the creation of Special Courts as a mechanism through which justice becomes accessible. In the words of the justice system operators interviewed in the survey, these mechanisms represent a quick means of solving problems: (…) people who seek the Criminal Court do so in search of a quick and effective solution to everyday problems (BATITTUCCI; SANTOS, 2010: 299). But in contrast to the perception of legal practitioners, the research also demonstrates that the population is largely unaware that this instance is Justice, in addition to the fact that the population itself does not recognize that it has committed crimes. Such aspects constitute a delicate finding about access to justice, since the central parts of the system, which are its users, do not see themselves in the act affected. Despite the differences between the authors' research and the present text, such points are perceived in a similar way to the analysis undertaken here, (…) it takes a legitimation on the part of the citizen/user of the justice system, recognizing this instance as an operator of justice, expanding not only the understanding of what it represents but also a conscious or polite accessibility (BATITTUCCI; SANTOS, 2010: 299).

Batittuci and Santos (2010) also show the high percentage of the population giving up and the large number of disinterest or non-representation on the part of the victims against the defendants, leaving to the Justice the bureaucratic-notary compliance in relation to the conflicts presented. In other words, the theme of giving up or disinterest seems to be similar in the studies of D'Araújo (1996) and Batittucci and Santos (2010), although it is possible to identify the differences in/in each context, social strata/income, region of residence , demand/action and type of justice accessed, as claimant (claimant) or defendant (claimed) and as victim and offender.

However, Amorim (2008) also highlights that the idea of ​​Special Civil and Criminal Courts in the Brazilian case, although it has contributed significantly to expanding access to justice in the country, presents great challenges, as the Brazilian legal culture still limits the participation of citizens. in the construction of the law, making the influence of the legal order of tutelage prevail. The notion of “guardianship function” can be understood, especially when we are dealing with the characteristics of Brazilian political culture and the forms of conflict resolution historically found in the country.[3] These “functions”, in the Brazilian case, have strong influences on the construction of citizenship in the country and have sedimented characteristics of its culture, leaving margins of decision-making power for a state third party. [4].

Therefore, when we approach mediation experiences, especially “community mediation”, it is necessary to understand its context, as we know that in the theoretical field, mediation is organized according to the rules and norms of each country, and that they are conceived to from each context/situation. In this sense, we can say that there are many practices and studies that address the issue of mediation, varying according to the different cultural traditions and the different democracies or political systems in force in the East and West (Moore, 1998; Schnitman and Littlejohn, 1999; Vasconcelos Souza, 2002). The first records on the existence of mediation activity find a very varied representation, according to rituals and symbols of each culture – Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, indigenous, among others – but its first evidence appears in the Old Testament records (Moore, 1998), with narratives that elucidate the negotiation of conflicts by a third party, who normally used these approaches to resolve civil and religious differences and conflicts. [5].

Therefore, the use of mediation to resolve conflicts between human groups seems to have a long tradition and also demonstrates to accompany humanity in the way of conducting part of social behaviors, presenting itself as an ancient practice, even though, daily, it is presented as a " new paradigm” (Schnitman and Littlejohn, 1999). But it was in fact in the 1960th century that mediation became institutionalized and treated as a procedure/method of intervention, especially in the United States. In this country, in the mid-XNUMXs, mediation began to be instrumentalized through the movement that became known as Alternative dispute resolution (ADR), which spread across the United States – laws were passed in all of its states that favored its use.

Mediation started to be incorporated, from these influences of ADRs, being to some extent adopted by the laws of several western countries. However, some Eastern countries had other influences, marked by their own conflict resolution histories, such as the Chinese case, for example, in which mediation was not influenced by the North Americans, it followed a very different “evolution”. own and based on the specific social and moral philosophy of that context. Thus, since the Western Zhou Dynasty in China, according to Wei Dan (2009), about 3.000 years ago, specific official posts were instituted to “calm down” conflicts through interventions that resemble mediation and conciliation, were designated as “Tiao Rien” (the mediator) and “Xu Li”. For the author, from the first unified and centralized empire by the Qin Dynasty (221 BC), mediation began to become official in Chinese reality. Therefore, in this same reality, of expansion of mediation in other Dynasties of China, the method became a way of relationship between the peoples of that context, and also followed the strong influence of the Confucian School that, emerged in the “Spring-Autumn” period. (770-476 BC), continued in the Han Dynasty to become a predominant doctrine throughout the feudal period in that context.

In Brazil, the idea of ​​mediation arises through specific and isolated initiatives, not expressing initial importance for the legal system or even for social relations. informalization of justice and the guarantee of human needs. According to Vezzulla (2002), in the 80s, for example, especially in the southern region of the country, an incipient germ of the idea of ​​mediation began, through the functioning of the Regional Labor Offices, which began to put aside the imposition of of conflict resolution at work, until then, habitually used by inspectors, and they started, based on dialogue, to enable agreements that contemplated the satisfaction of the parties. Even so, the historical records on mediation practices are confused with the emergence of conciliatory practices or actions, whether by judicial bodies or even by other institutes and non-governmental organizations. In any case, in the area of ​​community mediation, unlike in other countries, the emergence of these experiences seems to be confused with the promotion of the democratization of law and the participation of socioeconomically disadvantaged populations in terms of access to justice, and mediation itself. , due to the characteristics of its principles, seems to have found fertile ground in this process, a matter that we will address later.

The literature on mediation presents the procedure as a variant of negotiation (Vasconcelos-Souza, 2002), a sophisticated way of interacting between people, even though it is considered a manifestation/attribute found by humanity in the action of different peoples in the face of conflicts and differences. At the institutional level, mediation is conceptualized as a means by which people involved in a given situation request intervention through the help of a person unrelated to the issue (Moore, 1998), a third party called conflict mediator - who fulfills the function of facilitate the parties involved in a given conflict, by stimulating dialogue and using communication and language tools and strategies, in the search for possibilities that are capable of satisfying the interests and needs of each one during the process - characterizing it if by: (I) decision-making by the parties involved; (Ii) because it is a simple and informal process; (Iii) lower procedural cost; (Iv) voluntary (Vasconcelos-Souza, 2002; Braga Neto and Sampaio, 2007). Now, we continue in order to know the 05 selected experiences of community mediation to understand their theoretical and practical challenges.

We present one of the first national experiences on record[6], which more forcefully addresses the precepts of community mediation: they are the Mediation and Citizenship Centers (NMC). The NMC comprise the activities developed by the Citizenship Poles Program, whose creation dates from mid-1995, is an extension action based at the Faculty of Law of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), which has the following objective: to articulate activities of teaching, research and extension with a view to the promotion, inclusion and emancipation of groups with a history of exclusion and a trajectory of social risks. Its practice/execution is largely carried out in partnership with other UFMG units, other public and private higher education institutions and with public administration bodies – municipal, state and federal Executive Power. However, the methodological development process of this extension action took place from influences arising from the reflections of some professors, legal practitioners, who taught at the UFMG Law School at that period, and who were concerned with social inequalities (specifically, with the social exclusion of certain groups and their distance from human rights) and with the training model of law students at the time. According to Gustin (2005), the NMC methodology was developed in contact with the social reality of exclusion (in towns, agglomerates and favelas in Belo Horizonte), and gradually adapted to the types of local conflicts and from a theoretical field that it originated from the conceptions of democratic relations and expressed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and by Jürgen Habermas. The objective of the centers, for the author, is to promote alternatives that allow the rescue of human rights, the constitution of social capital, the formation of mixed social networks and the development of mediation, based on the concepts of "citizenship", "subjectivity" and “emancipation”. In their initial design, the NMCs were organized as follows, part of the team returned to the mediation actions that were developed within a nucleus (usually a space donated by community associations, non-governmental or governmental organizations, etc.) and, another part of the team, the so-called “expansion”, which worked externally and in connection with the mixed social network, dedicating itself to the actions of constitution/increase of social capital in the community (Gustin, 2005). The NMCs are and/or were composed of graduate professionals and students from the areas of law, psychology, social work, social sciences, among others, and have always had the community and its community leaders as partners in the project. Therefore, this experience has a trajectory based on the extension practice of a public university, in the midst of reflections on access to rights, prioritizing dialogue and promoting local (community) ways of solving problems.

            Another experience, which also shows records of having been one of the first projects and/or initiatives of community mediation led by civil society, was the Balcão de Direitos – even though in its beginnings, its focus was more directed to the provision of civil documentation and guaranteeing access to formal rights. The Balcão de Direitos was implemented in 1996 and comes from the various activities developed by the non-governmental organization Viva Rio. Its objective was to promote the democratization of rights, from the dissemination of information and the production of fairer alternatives for the resolution of conflicts, aiming at the full exercise of citizenship, thus contributing to a solidary and plural society (Strozenberg; Ribeiro, 2001) . The project aimed to provide legal advice to residents of favelas in Rio de Janeiro and was the result of a request from community leaders, who pointed to legal assistance in favela areas as the most appropriate mechanism and urgently needed by those populations. The project prioritized the local ways of solving problems, and as in the UFMG Project proposal, the methodology was adapted in contact with the social reality, for that, a differential of its practice is that its team, was composed by the citizenship agents themselves (community mediators) and also by external lawyers (who were not favela residents). The Balcão de Direitos was the initiative in the field of community mediation, internalized by the National Secretariat for Human Rights of the Federal Government, being expanded to different parts of the country, with varied structures and characteristics, transforming over time, in the practices of the Centers of Reference in Human Rights, aiming to ensure legal documentation and forms of conflict resolution. Thus, this experience arises from the relationship between representatives/leaders of Rio's favelas and an important civil society organization, it was a project that also aimed at problematizing and/or accessing the rights of the poorest populations, however, even if it keeps differences between the Project of the UFMG NMC that was born from the beginning with the idea of ​​mediation, Balcão was gradually moving towards this methodology.

            Another experience that marks community mediation practices in Brazil was the unprecedented creation of the Community Justice Project (currently the Community Justice Program) in the Federal District. This project was born from the experience of the Itinerant Special Civil Court of the Court of Justice of the Federal District and Territories, which sought to assist communities that experience the lack of access to formal justice. During the first three years of this experience, the lack of knowledge of citizens in relation to their rights was observed, as well as the difficulty in producing evidence, in view of the informality with which businesses were signed in those communities. The objective of the Community Justice Project was and/or is to democratize the realization of justice, restoring to the citizen and the community the ability to manage their own conflicts with autonomy. The project team was composed of community agents (people who live in the communities), accompanied by an interdisciplinary team, composed of lawyers, psychologists, social workers, administrative support workers, an artist and a judge who coordinated the Program. The methodology of the Community Justice Project was born based on the idea of ​​community, network animation and mediation, concepts similar to the UFMG Project, and to some extent, close to the Balcão de Direitos, and the main activities foreseen by the Justice Project Community was and/or are: 1) legal information; 2) community mediation; and 3) formation and/or animation of social networks. The methodology of the Community Justice Project was absorbed by the Judiciary Reform Secretariat of the Ministry of Justice, and internalized by this secretariat, becoming a policy stimulated/internalized by the Federal Government, being adapted according to the reality of each State, Municipal Government. or other organizations. Although this process of adaptation and/or incorporation at the national level took place in a different way from the original design, over time it has changed and adapted to different contours.

            Another experience, perhaps with an essentially popular nature and developed in the midst of a civil society organization, is the initiative of the Popular Offices of Community Mediation within the scope of Juspopuli - Human Rights Office of Bahia, which is a social organization, constituted in June 2001, in the form of a non-profit civil society, with the aim of disseminating and democratizing knowledge about the law and contributing to the realization of human rights. Education for rights and the dissemination of mediation and other forms of building sustainable coexistence and preventing violence are the Organization's main strategies (Nascimento, A.; Leonelli, V., 2010). The Popular Mediation and Guidance Offices on Rights are spaces for public and free service in which the community leaders themselves are trained, monitored and advised by Juspopuli and it is they who offer legal-social guidance and popular mediation services. The Project based on education for human rights has among its main activities: the holding of courses, workshops, seminars and other training events on individual, social, diffuse and collective human rights, acting in the mediation of individual and collective conflicts. The training activities, according to their creators, based on the pillars of Human Rights and constructionist principles, aim to promote articulation and integration (social cohesion) of the entire community, in order to facilitate the formation of solidarity and service networks.

            Finally, another experience that is presented on the national scene as one of the practices in the field of public policies is the Conflict Mediation Program in Minas Gerais. It is a state public policy to prevent violence with a territorial and community approach, located in 33 regions of the state that concentrate the highest rates of violent crime. Allocated in the organic structure of the public administration of the Government of the State of Minas Gerais, of the Secretary of State for Social Defense (SEDS), through the Special Coordination for the Prevention of Crime, through the Nucleus for Peaceful Resolution of Conflicts (NRPC) which, by in turn, it is responsible for the general coordination of the Conflict Mediation Program. The Conflict Mediation Program originated from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, through the Citizenship Poles Program, presented above. The general objective of the Conflict Mediation Program is to promote peaceful means of conflict management at interpersonal, community and institutional levels, which contribute to minimizing, preventing and/or preventing them from unfolding in situations of violence and criminality. Its specific objectives are: (i) to apply and disseminate mediation principles and techniques; (ii) favoring access to rights; (iii) encourage community organization. The program develops instruments and intervention tools aimed at minimizing risk factors, reducing social vulnerabilities, promoting human rights, fostering social capital and confronting different forms of violence. Its main activities are: providing legal guidance and conflict mediation services, both at interpersonal and collective levels, developing community projects and in partnership with community organizations. Its team is currently made up of graduate professionals and students in the areas of psychology, rights, social sciences, history, pedagogy, among others, and essentially relies on the participation of community leaders and references.

            Thus, based on the elucidation, even if brief, of the experiences of community mediation, we found some converging points. The main one is the relationship that all these experiences keep with the guarantee of rights and the promotion of people's participation in the way of solving their conflicts. We realize that each practice has a different trajectory, for example, the Pólos Project of UFMG, of the Centers for Mediation and Citizenship, focused on guaranteeing the human rights of socially excluded populations and for the "quality or format" of teaching aimed at students. law students, based on this experience, over the years, they adapted the work methodology and approached community mediation, based on this experience, it was possible to implement a public policy capable of working and developing these conceptual precepts, although, From what we saw, years later, with the birth of the Conflict Mediation program, some adaptations were made, although the concern with human rights is highlighted by this practice, we realized that the central point became the prevention of violence. In the experience of the Balcão de Direitos and Jupopuli, we observe great similarities, due to the popular and community essence of these practices, although the Balcão started its perspective on guaranteeing legal assistance, unlike Jupopuli, which already in its birth is based on the concept of mediation, we can assess that the Balcão was created in the mid-90s, in which “conflict resolution” practices addressed the issue of access to rights more than mediation itself, however, in the case of Juspopuli, born in 2001, the influence of popular mediation experiences certainly crossed his doctrine and ideas. On the other hand, we find perhaps one of the experiences that reconcile the two aspects highlighted so far, on the one hand the institutionality of a public policy, on the other hand, the essentiality of the community at the heart of its Project, it is the Community Justice Program.

            Therefore, some theories are essential to deal with the organization of the central ideas that conceive the core of these experiences in community mediation. For example, in the field of social sciences, especially studies focused on the analysis of democracy, law and the state, there is the theory Habermasian, who, when analyzing the social, economic and cultural dimensions that constitute social interactions, proposes a model that allows the analysis of civil society with the advent of modernity through two forms of rationality, which are at play simultaneously: (I) the substantive rationality of the “lifeworld”, which takes place through the “face-to-face” relationship, represented by an internal perspective capable of producing the point of view and the action of individuals who act in society, this action is not only in economic structures, but above all in the world of life; and (Ii) the formal rationality of the “world of systems”, which deals with legal institutions that represent an external perspective, such as bureaucratized technical rationality. For the Habermasian theory, there are no displacements between these two worlds, but the constitution of what the author presents as the public sphere, which is organized in abstract space. The world of life, for Habermas (1989), is constituted through the context of the situation of the action, while it also provides the necessary resources for the processes of its interpretation, and the participants of the communication seek to overcome the fragility of mutual understanding that emerged. in each context of a new situation. On the other hand, the conception of the public sphere, for Habermas (1997), must be understood as a social phenomenon and not as an organization, institution or even as a system, as it does not have a normative structure of regulation and control; in addition to being characterized by open, permeable and shiftable horizons. For the author, the public sphere presents itself as a communication network, where the contents and the taking of positions are sedimented based on the communicational flows, these are filtered and postulated to elucidate what is thought, being able to generate opinion. public.

The author emphasizes that the public sphere is still closely related to concrete spaces of a public, because the more they disconnect from their physical presence, the more the abstraction of the passage from the spatial structure of simple interactions to the generalization of the public sphere becomes evident. For the author, the actions of individuals are not only linked to economic structures, but to the public sphere, becoming, for that purpose, the essence of the "stage" of the world of life and the world of systems, would then be the problems of the world of life. life that leads us to consider public opinion.

Even knowing that the Habermasian theory brings important contributions to the field of community mediation, in which communication, language, dialogue and diversity are the “soul” of identity, there are theoretical limitations, given the social contexts in which they were “ thought” and/or “implemented” the community mediation practices elucidated throughout the text.

  1. Conclusions

            We can consider as a central analysis that the practices and experiences of community mediation permeate a very similar vision of social reality, and that is perhaps their greatest similarity. What leads us to think about a deconstruction that “community mediation” is done for popular regions, by popular and for popular, because what seems to be evident is that the analyzed practices focus their interventions in contexts marked by the history of socioeconomic exclusion, precisely because of the absence of fundamental rights, however, based on this premise it cannot be said that community mediation should be done only by and in the community itself or live in the community itself, the concepts identified by all the experiences seemed to us to value communities excluded from access to rights, but not to cut community mediation to specific contexts.

            Therefore, to present conclusions about the universal notions present from the analysis of community mediation practices, seems to us incipient for the objectives proposed here, but we know that some questions were possible to reflect, and also some initial considerations about the myths that permeate the field of “community mediation” – especially, which helps to deconstruct rigid ideas – shedding light for scholars of community mediation, so that they broaden their “look” and sediment a “vision on social reality”, as demonstrated by the Habermasian theory when dealing with the dimension of the public sphere, very characteristic of community mediation, which in essence is reproduced through communicative action; this action is manifested by natural language and daily communicative practice, where the core of the issue is mediated by understanding and by the relationship/interaction with the social space, which does not mean “specific region”, going beyond the notion of community as “land static” but from the notion of territoriality, capable of adding values ​​and beliefs to a given group of individuals in a given time and space. Therefore, let us make the exercise of visiting the concept of community mediation much more in its philosophical essence than in its practical and/or empirical form of intervention.

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[1] Master in History, Culture and Cultural Heritage. Specialist in Public Policy. Specialist in History and Political Cultures. Conflict Mediator. Graduated in psychology. She has previously served as Superintendent of Defense and Promotion of Human Rights at the State Secretariat for Social Assistance and Human Rights of Rio de Janeiro. She has worked as director, coordinator, methodological supervisor and mediator of the Conflict Mediation Program of the Government of the State of Minas Gerais, for 08 years. She works in consultancy in the area of ​​elaboration, execution, monitoring and evaluation of public policies, in the areas: community mediation, human rights, violence prevention, public security and human trafficking. She is a consultant for UNODC and the National Secretariat of Justice of the Ministry of Justice; she is a collaborator of the National Network of Community Mediation and of the Distance Course on the Fundamentals of Community Mediation of ENAM of the Secretariat for Judicial Reform of the Ministry of Justice. Conflict Mediator. Curriculum lattes:

http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.do?id=K4299863Z9

[2] Other community mediation experiences exist and/or have already been implemented, many of them with similarities to the practices presented in the text, but for this analysis, we selected only 05. We also emphasize that the analyzed experiences have publications on the concepts and methodologies adopted.

[3] According to Borges (2003), the military influence on Brazilian governments in the 1964th and 1964th centuries denotes a meaning shaped by the idea of ​​guardianship, which can be observed in the country's legal culture. The author works with two moments: the first, before XNUMX, characterized by what is conventionally called the “arbitral-tutelary function”, consisting of the actions of the military in the face of the conduct of the State carried out at that time by civilians; and the second, after XNUMX, characterized by what the literature called “direction function”. In this second period, the military assumed the central role in coordinating the State. To Ana of Uran apoud Dockhorn (2002), was about the political, economic, social and military strategy synthesis materialized by a complete program to guarantee order and social and economic development.

[4] This led many researchers to studies on the subject of Brazilian citizenship and the relationship with the civic culture of the country's population.

[5] Some biblical episodes encourage negotiation between parties involved in conflicts, such as Abraham and Lot; Abraham and King Abimelech; Isaac and King Abimelech; Jacob and Laban, see Jacob Dolinger apoud Moore (1998).

[6] In the Brazilian case, there are some experiences called “community mediation practice” created/implemented in the 90s, part of them were cataloged in the Diagnosis carried out by the Ministry of Justice in 2005, for further clarification, see the result of the research and mapping at: http://www.acessoajustica.gov.br/pub/_downloads/downloads_acesso_justica.pdf, accessed on October 10, 2014.

 

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