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Third Party Mediation in Conflict Resolution

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THIRD PARTY MEDIATION IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Introduction
The contemporary international system has witnessed dramatic increases in numerous conflicts. Specifically, of the six continents in the world, not even one is immune to one form of violent conflicts or the other. Of all efforts to explain the causes of these conflicts, a growing body of research findings highlights the association between economic deprivation and conflict. (Gurr 1970; Elbadawi 1992; Collier and Hoeffler 1998; Stewart 2002; Deiminger 2003; Justino 2004).
Thence, circumstances of gross economic denial, together with social, political, and environmental factors precipitate conflict.
Third party mediation in Conflict Resolution has gained a considerable and increasing attention from academics and policy makers. There is plethora of literature on the role of third party in conflict resolution. Due to the complexity of the discipline, conflict resolution seems to be a relative term that can mean either conflict prevention or conflict management. Likewise, debates ensued as to why a third party mediates in conflicts. For instance, people marvel why the ‘coalition of the willing’ intervened in Iraq over the unproven existence of weapons of mass destruction but not in North Korea that admitted having the weapons. In addition, NATO intervened in Kosovo, but not in Bosnia, the UN sent troops to halt ethnocide in East Timor but had done nothing to prevent same from happening in Rwanda. More breathtakingly, the level and kind of mediation in the Middle East conflict. Perhaps, proponents and adherents of the system theory will argue that the world is a conglomeration of states with minimum acceptable and common values of rules of behaviour. Hence, they argued that it is possible to talk about an international political system or warrant a conclusion that the globe constitutes

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