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Conflict Resolution And Prevention Resolution

Decent Essays

In the recent years, there has been a consistent increasing concern in the cultural aspect of conflict resolution and prevention. This might be as a result of the increased number of intense ethnic/cultural conflicts that exist in the world. Balkans and Rwanda are the most cited examples of the violent intra-country conflicts that are as a result of cultural dimensions. However, one should not forget that even the state to state disputes include numerous cultural elements as evident in the Indian-Pakistan war. Together with other conflicts in the world has brought the element of culture and its influence to the forefront of conflict resolution. This has resulted to increased determinations of the international communities to appease …show more content…

Communication is a significant barrier in cross-cultural mediation. Successful communication is difficult enough to be a mediation issue even without introducing the different culture in the communication process. As far as models and theories of verbal communication among the various parties are concerned, they define how a message is encoded first by the sender through words and then it is transmitted to the recipient who then decodes it to interpret the intended meaning. Meaningful information is often added or lost in this process.
The issues of communication are aggravated when communication process takes place in different cultures. This is not because of the fundamental problem of translation, or because of the difficulties for the non-native speakers of grasping distinctions when discussing an issue in a foreign language. Language reflects a culture since it is a social instrument. The more the differences between two communicators, the more likely that the context of information will be altered or lost during this transmission. If a certain culture comprises of attached values nd shared concepts, then the culture is the basis for effective communication, which enables the correct interpretation of the encoded message. Therefore, if similar words have different meanings for the mediation participants, the two

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