… EDUCATION FOR PEACE …
A article by Gonzalo Flores in am de Queretaro
Since its creation in March of this year to date, the Mediation Directorate of the Municipality of Querétaro has treated 4,870 citizen conflicts, benefitting 7,850 people who have resorted to this unit for conflict resolution , informed Joaquín Gerardo González de León, head of the Directorate of the Interior and coordinator of the mediation area.
Interview with Joaquín Gerardo González de León
According to the official, only 20 cases out of the total have been sent to the civil courts, when mediation did not work and some of those involved reoccurrent actions of the dispute, although he said that these cases are minimal and correspond to administrative failures.
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(click here for a version in Spanish).
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González de León added that in March of this year the operation began with 8 offices in the municipality and 18 mediators who were trained by the State Superior Court of Justice.
Of the total files created for mediation, he said that in 60 percent of the issues conflicts have to do with neighborhood issues, including noise, parking issues, trash on public roads and pets, which he listed as the main reasons for complaints
Mediation Directorate has resolved more than half of the conflicts between individuals.
He also revealed that in 60 percent of the cases they have reached agreements between neighbors, “and although the problems are not resolved in depth, opening the dialogue is already an advance and on that agreements are made that both parties must respect.”
In the remaining cases, he stressed that no agreements are reached due to the denial of any of the two parties involved, or because they do not attend mediations.
“The high percentage of conflict resolution indicates that the population is interested in solving their conflicts through dialogue,” he said.