Religion and Mediation Action Guide
The “Religion and Mediation Action Guide” will help religious actors — and the policymakers and practitioners who seek to engage them — to more effectively organize, facilitate or support mediation where religion is relevant to the participants, the process or the issues. It provides guidance on how faith-based mediators, texts, principles, values, symbols or rituals can be useful when religious issues and identities are important to the parties to a conflict. This guide is available in English, Arabic and French.
About the Author(s)
and Editors S. Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana is a research affiliate at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Peace. She also served as assistant professor and associate director of Georgetown University's MA program in conflict resolution and as associate director of the Salam Institute. Her experience includes research, programming in conflict resolution and development in the MENA region, intergroup and interfaith mediation and dialogue facilitation, gender mainstreaming, and evaluation and monitoring. She is the author of a number of publications in the area of religion, peace, and conflict. Tarek Maassarani is program director of the Salam Institute for Peace and Justice and a performancebased certified mediator in the inclusive model. His experience includes developing and implementing cross-border encounter programs, gang intervention efforts, community mediation and dialogue, peace education programs, nonviolent action, and restorative justice initiatives, as well as a variety of training services for USIP and others in the United States, Middle East, and Africa. Tarek teaches peacebuilding at several universities and, as an attorney, practiced, published, and lectured in the area of human rights. He comes from a mixed Jewish, Muslim, and Christian family. Martine Miller is vice president of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy and former Asia director of the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers. She is a mediator and conflict transformation specialist with almost two decades of engaged experience with communities, government and UN agencies, regional bodies, international nongovernmental organizations, and academic institutions. Martine's work has engaged her directly in fluid war to postwar reconstruction and development contexts across more than seventy-five countries in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, West to East Europe, and North and South America. Susan Hayward is senior advisor on religion and inclusive societies at the United States Institute of Peace. Prior to joining USIP, she worked on human rights and refugee policy. At USIP, Susan specializes in the role of religious factors and actors in violence and peacebuilding with a focus on interfaith relations, gender dynamics, and political Buddhism. She has designed and implemented projects in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Colombia. She coedited the book Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen. Susan is pursuing her PhD in religious pluralism at Georgetown University and is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.