Lecture on “Conflicts among 220+ Nationalities: Mediating in the United Nations Workplace”
Informational flier associated with the lunch lecture featuring Mushegh Manukyan
By: Daniella Martino; Staff Editor
On February 2nd, 2023, Mushegh Manukyan, the Head of the Mediation Unit for the Office of the Ombudsman for United Nations Funds and Programmes, presented a lecture co-hosted by Columbia International Arbitration Association and The American Review of International Arbitration at Columbia Law School. Prior to his work at the UN, Mr. Manukyan practiced international dispute resolution at Three Crowns LLP in Washington, D.C. as well as served as a mediator at the D.C. Court of Appeals and the World Bank Group’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman. Additionally, Mr. Manukyan was the architect of Armenia’s first mediation laws and founded the first private mediation and arbitration center in Armenia.
In 2017, the United Nations General Assembly recognized “multilingualism as a core value of [its] Organization” in resolution 71/328. This position aligns with current legal scholarship which promotes the importance of legal pluralism to more effectively communicate on the international stage. In the view of Gleider I. Hernández, Professor of Public International Law and Secretary-General of the European Society of International Law, the interaction of different languages in a legal context “allows for diversity, be it cultural, intellectual or otherwise, to thrive. By perceiving international law through different languages and having its interpretation occur in a multilingual context, one can perhaps better grasp the multiplicity of understandings that are lost in a uniformised linguistic setting.”
To reap the benefits inherent in multilingualism, international law must recognize the accompanying challenges in facilitating dialogue, particularly because ambiguity is ubiquitous in all languages. While confusion is common with discussions in a single language, this confusion multiplies when the conversation is across languages, with issues in translation or untranslatability making conversations more difficult. The dynamics of the United Nations workplace provide an interesting opportunity to observe the intersection of alternative dispute resolution and multilingualism in action.
The Office of the Ombudsman for United Nations Funds and Programmes provides informal dispute resolution services to around 80,000 staff and non staff members for any type of workplace conflict arising in UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNOPS, and UN Women. The Global Mediation Panel of the Office of the Ombudsman includes over 65 mediators and is qualified to mediate any workplace-related conflict involving these five UN agencies. Four principles–established by the Secretary General–guide the Office’s work: independence, neutrality, confidentiality, and informality.
In his lecture at Columbia Law School, Mr. Manukyan highlighted the many advantages that mediation provides, when compared to litigation brought in the United Nations Dispute Tribunal or arbitration. Most cases are resolved quickly, within a matter of a few sessions spanning hours rather than months or years; in fact “84 per cent of cases took less than 16 hours to conclude once parties entered into mediation,” as indicated by the 2021 Annual Report. The success rate of mediation is also impressive, with settlements achieved in 94% of the cases concluded. Although not every case is well suited to resolution by mediation, the benefits provided by the Office show the important role that mediation plays in settling conflict.
In Mr. Manukyan’s experience, many of the cases involve individuals of at least two nationalities. The Global Mediation Panel mediators are therefore experienced and equipped with the skills required to mediate in an intercultural context. For instance, the cultural background of the individuals in a supervisee-supervisor relationship might impact an employee’s willingness to speak out against a supervisor, perceiving the initiation of the dispute process as disrespectful.
Interestingly, aspects of mediator training focus on the workplace culture and rules of the UN, as Mr. Manukyan described it, which are unique in themselves. Mr. Manukyan approximated that somewhere around 90% of mediations are conducted in English, with Spanish as the second most utilized language. In keeping with the United Nations’ commitment to multilingualism, parties can request any language of their choosing, with the Office carefully respecting that decision and providing a mediator that speaks the language. While translation can complicate the process if parties request two different languages necessitating two mediators, this situation does not come up often given the availability of 65 mediators who speak over 40 languages. Often the same lawyers represent the parties involved in mediation: those are in-house lawyers representing the five UN entities or lawyers from the Office of Staff Legal Assistance, which is an office that provides free legal assistance to relevant UN staff members.
In Mr. Manukyan’s experience, cultural and linguistic differences can contribute to conflict. For example, he asked the audience to consider the word “empathy.” He explained that, in some cultural perceptions, particularly from a Western standpoint, the word carries a positive connotation, encouraging one to see from another point of view as a helpful exercise facilitating cooperation and understanding. To others, empathy may seem a negative quality, counter to one’s dignity, as opposed to advocating for one’s own perspective.
Connecting Mr. Manukyan’s discussion with Hernández’s scholarship expands on multilingual analysis in three significant ways. First, the question about interpretations of “empathy” demonstrates how “[i]deas, even under the best auspices, are not fully translatable into spoken or written form. . . . The connotative aspects of language entail that words carry implied meanings, often associated with our cultural or national settings.” In any multicultural, multilingual, multinational setting, linguistic disagreement due to different implied meaning–as well as the difficulty of capturing elusive concepts in any language–pose an inescapable challenge of which employers and colleagues should remain mindful and diligently seek to address miscommunication as a preemptive dispute prevention strategy.
Second, one potential unifying mechanism in the context of Mr. Manukyan’s work appears to be the internationality of the UN workplace culture. For Hernández, “in international legal circles . . . [s]ome common ground must be chosen, yet it is difficult to speak those ideas in our native tongue, much less translate them on the international plane. That problem of translation goes well beyond linguistic concordance; it is rooted in a problem of vocabulary.” The players in the dispute resolution system–the mediators and the lawyers–as well as the employees involved possess a common understanding of dynamics in the UN which allows mediation to open dialogue within the organization in pursuit of positive resolution for all parties. Despite the myriad of potential differences, the UN culture operates to ground the dialogue in a semblance of common vocabulary, with mediators trained in the specific cultural approach in order to best support communication.
Finally, Mr. Manukyan and the Global Mediation Panel seek to achieve the same results as the multilingual dialogue advanced by Hernández, which is that “in many ways, all communication is the translation of thought into language.” The Office of the Ombudsman for United Nations Funds and Programmes has successfully advanced mediation as a method for bridging divides rendered by language, culture, and workplace conflict. Mediation, like multilingual interpretation, attempts to reconcile competing perspectives into one settled understanding ideally perceived as beneficial for all parties involved.
Daniella Martino is a second-year student at Columbia Law School and a Staff member of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. She graduated from Northwestern University in 2019.