Mediation in Ukraine: Urgent Issues of Theory and Practice and Necessity of Legislative Regulation

Abstract

The institution of mediation is well known in Ukraine, however, actually it is not regulated by the law and a lot of people are still unaware of such process. As noted by some authors, today mediation as such exists only on “public basis”, and actually is not regulated by law.

In Ukraine there is the necessity to formulate the definition of “mediation” and embody its principles, all responsibilities and results, special aspects of the process of mediation and mediation agreement as well, functions, rights and duties of the mediator as well as assign the functions of mediator not only to specially trained persons-mediators, but the notaries and lawyers. As there is the number of institutions in Ukraine that are applied in jurisdictional processes and in its essence it is nothing more than the mediation, although they are named differently. It is important to describe the possibility for the settlement of the dispute by making the settlement agreement as well as introduce the implementation of the mediation in notarial practice and law enforcement process.

The main question in Ukraine is the regulation of mediation at the national level and developing of the framework of cross-border mediation in future. As in Ukraine there is only three draft bills “On mediation” and the draft Law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on the use of mediation” and it is recommended to use some other international and national laws.

The process of mediation has proven its success and significance in the world practice and has the potential to take a worthy place in Ukraine as one of the alternative methods of law enforcement and protection of human rights.