HD’s Mediation Support and Policy (MESU) team is dedicated to providing effective mediation support and advice on strategy, evaluation, learning to HD’s worldwide mediation engagement. The MESU team also ensures HD shares its expertise and experience with other mediators and organisations working in international peacemaking.
HD believes that opportunities to reflect critically with and learn from peers with experience and expertise, will strengthen any initiative to prevent, mitigate or resolve conflict.
MESU’s mission is to ensure HD’s effectiveness, and the team does so by strengthening HD’s reflective processes, and reinforcing the organization’s cohesion and connectedness. The MESU team enables HD projects and senior management to think strategically, track and evaluate progress, design and adapt programming, and learn from each other along the way.
MESU has developed an innovative approach to Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) in peacemaking, which linked with a peer-to-peer learning approach across HD operations generates valuable insights. HD shares these insights with the wider mediation community via practitioner-oriented publications, via participation in various professional networks, and via HD’s flagship policy event, the Oslo Forum co-hosted with Norway.
HD believes that in order to be sustainable, peace processes need to be inclusive. Coordinated by MESU, HD’s three Inclusion Advisors strengthen the organisation’s approach to inclusion by supporting both HD teams and civil society actors as they build frameworks for broadening participation in peace processes.
Beyond in-house advice and knowledge-sharing, the MESU team provides advice and expertise to other individuals, institutions and organisations involved in mediating armed conflicts. This includes contributing to the EU’s Mediation Support project ERMES, as well as collaborative relationships with the UN, regional organizations, Governments and other peacemaking networks and actors. For example, the team has provided extensive support to national dialogue efforts in Yemen and Libya, and has developed a mediation handbook series for the African Union.