OREANDA-NEWS. On 10 February 2009 was announced, that IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, had helped set up a network of internationally accredited mediators in Ukraine to help companies and banks reduce the time and cost of resolving business disputes, a service that could be especially important amid the economic downturn.

The mediators, trained at the Ukrainian Mediation Center, have received accreditation from the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), an internationally recognized provider of alternative dispute resolution services worldwide. In the last three months of 2008, the mediators completed a series of CEDR training courses that were conducted as a part of IFC’s Ukraine Corporate Governance Mediation Pilot Project.

Program graduates have already started applying their newly acquired mediator’s skills to resolving corporate and family disputes.

Olga Shepel, General Director of Kaanto LLC, described her first experience as a mediator. “With parties to the dispute moving from defense to attack, I was impressed with the changes I could observe while posing questions in the right way,” she said. “The parties calmed down and started talking about their actual interests.”

Halyna Yeremenko, the Head of Ukrainian Mediation Center, said: “We hope that the accreditation of Ukrainian mediators based on high international standards opens broad opportunities for our graduates in Ukraine, and also across other post-Soviet countries. As a next step, with IFC’s help, we are planning to develop our own mediator-skills training program”. 

Amid economic difficulties in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Mediation Center will seek to provide customized extra-judicial dispute-resolution services to clients who need help in developing negotiating positions and saving costs wherever possible.

The Ukraine Corporate Governance Mediation Pilot Project was launched in October 2008 and is a part of IFC's ADR Global Product Development Initiative. Supported by the governments of Canada and the Netherlands, IFC helped introduce mediation in Bosnia in 2004 by launching the Alternative Dispute Resolution Program. The program has settled 350 cases in three years, freeing more than USD 13.5 million in blocked assets that local businesses are now reinvesting.