In een redactioneel artikel geeft de redactie een toelichting op het tijdschriftnummer in kwestie.

This article deals with confidentiality in mediation proceedings. Confidentiality is considered to be one of the key advantages of mediation. Usually the parties agree that they will not be compelled to produce evidence concerning the mediation, nor call the mediator as a witness in case of subsequent judicial proceedings. However, it is not sure how the court in civil judicial proceedings will handle such an agreement. The court will have to balance the interests of confidentiality and establishing the truth. In some cases it is clear that the court should not respect the confidentiality agreement, for example when there is an obligation to disclose evidence of a criminal offence. In other cases there might be proper grounds to let the confidentiality prevail, but there is no guarantee that the court will respect the confidentiality agreement. As part of the implementation of the European directive on mediation Member States are obliged to adopt provisions about admissibility of evidence in civil judicial proceedings in order to protect certain aspects of confidentiality of mediation proceedings.

In this contribution the focus is on whether mediation, as it is practiced today, can be regarded as a profession and if so, whether it belongs to the ‘new’ or ‘old’ professions. In an attempt to answer this question the structure of the body of knowledge and the predictability of the outcomes of the application of that body of knowledge are discussed.

Members of the Dutch Vereniging van familierecht advocaten scheidingsbemiddelaars (Association of lawyers specializing in family law and divorce mediation) meet on a regular, voluntary basis to share their experiences with inter alia mediation through ‘intervision’. The intervision-method used is the Balint-method. The author describes the working of the Balint methodology and its value for the individual professional and the development of the profession as a whole.

Special education for mentally and physically handicapped children is a potential source of conflict between parents and school teachers/school team. Recommendations are given to better manage this type of conflicts, inter alia through mediation.

The British Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform actively promotes the early settlement of individual labour disputes, preferably within the company or organization. This has resulted in the so-called mandatory statutory ’3-step procedure’. This conflict management procedure is laid down in the Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004. From 6 April 2009 this procedure will no longer be mandatory. However, the procedure as such will remain and further tools and assistance for the early settlement of individual labour disputes will be developed by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service.

In the Netherlands the interest in collaborative divorce, collaborative mediation is growing. On 17 October 2008 the Vereniging Collaborative Divorce Holland (Association of Collaborative Divorce Holland) was established. One of its activities is the organization of training in collaborative divorce, mediation. The main findings of the first training program which took place on 19, 20 and 21 January 2009 are discussed in this report.